For the Fairest
by Queen
Summary: A ficful of fairy tales! Following Naraku's scent, the Inu-tachi find themselves facing a fortress of roses, surrounding a castle where no one stirs within... complete -IY/K, S/M
1. the veil of thorns

For The Fairest   
  


_The evil goddess of Discord, Eris, was naturally not popular in Olympus,_   
_and when the gods gave a banquet they were apt to leave her out._   
_Resenting this deeply, she determined to make trouble-_   
_and she succeeded very well indeed._   
_At an important marriage, to which she alone of all the divinities was not invited,_   
_she threw into the banqueting hall a golden apple marked_   
_For The Fairest...._   
_-The Judgment of Paris, retold by Edith Hamilton_

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Chapter 1- _The Veil of Thorns_   


_ Once Upon a Time, as all true fairy tales must begin...._   


A young girl stood in the red afternoon sunlight, watching the agitated motions of one of her companions. She understood his perplexed expression and halting movements, an attempt to appear confident in his decisions, though the faint taste of confusion made his feints at certainty lie. None of them could quite place the oddity of their situation- though odd situations were not uncommonly found amongst them. 

Opening her eyes once more from a moment of silent contemplation, Higurashi Kagome drank in the vivid colors of the deep forest, sipping on the richness of the vibrant hues. Maple trees, their lacy limbs interlocked, were afire, a cathedral of translucent, living stained glass arching above them and creating the illusion of being within a floating, many colored dome of heaven. The leaves clung to their branches, the tree sap not yet having entirely left, allowing the group of passerby to see them in a rare moment before they fell to the ground and became little more than cinnamon scented forest litter, ready to crunch underfoot, dead and robbed of their beauty. 

Into the autumn display, the noise of cicada clacked. 

This, of course, was unnatural. 

The insects that hid themselves amongst the gnarled depths of tree roots and tufts of high grass...they were the creatures of warm summer, not blazing fall, and the clash of brilliant, death touched color fit uncomfortably with the somewhat obnoxious summer song. 

This same clash grated on her delicate miko powers, obvious signs of supernatural tampering, and though it did not feel quite expressly evil, it was unnatural and wrong, and she wished to find the source, as did their currently- and fairly frequently- annoyed fearless leader. 

Inuyasha set their strange start-and-stop pace, drawing them all to a halt and then charging forward again, occasionally switching directions slightly, adjusting as he chased down and invisible trail traced through the air. When the bizarre chase began, they had been moving at the usual, steady pace down one of the forest roads, working off a lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with Cheetos on the side, conveniently brought to the feudal era by the local time traveling schoolgirl. Inuyasha had suddenly stopped, lifted his head, and said a single word that had them all chasing after him a moment later. 

"Naraku!" 

Picking up on that particular scent so abruptly was somewhat unexpected, though they were hardly going to just pass on by. The chase was on, and seemingly growing endless, as the trees grew denser and the ground became padded with soft moss. Kagome attempted to tread lightly, seeing her footprints and bike tracks appear damply on the earth below. Miroku and Sango were moving quickly just ahead of her, the group strung out in an almost single file line, while Kirara, untransformed due to the pressing closeness of the flora, was keeping pace with the taiji-ya. Kagome was beginning to feel tired, more so from carting her awkward bike over rougher patches, and she wondered if maybe she should grab Shippou out of the basket and leave the bike against a tree, coming back for it after they found whatever it was that smelled like Naraku. Did that mean they were close to his castle? To just stumble across it at random like this seemed a bit anticlimactic, and she didn't hold out much hope for that being their destination. Where then? It was too dense with forest around here for there to be a village, though with the bizarre out of season autumn, there was clearly _something_ going on in this area. 

Glancing down, Kagome noticed that Shippou was hanging from the basket of her bike, expression shifting between childlike wonder at the unseasonal display of tree foliage, and boredom over the silent chase. Nothing had happened for too long, and since he wasn't really running with everyone else, the immediate panic and alarm of hearing the name 'Naraku' had begun to wear off for him. 

Just ahead, a clearing began to break through the thick tree trunks, and unfiltered yellow sunlight streamed dustily through. If there was a chance to stop their running for awhile and ask Inuyasha to be a bit more specific in what they were chasing, this would be a good opportunity. She opened her lips to speak, but was interrupted by Inuyasha's announcement as he slid to another halt. 

"Here!" 

Sango and Miroku, concentrating more on their footing on the uneven forrest floor, lifted their heads and picked up the pace for the last few lengths, since it seemed their goal had finally fallen into the view of at least one of them. Perhaps now would come some answers. 

Just ahead, Inuyasha was craning his neck back in an attempt to see to the top of what he had reached. Sango, a bit confused as she stopped and recognized what their destination was, managed in a puzzled tone, "Roses?" 

A prickly green and vermillion wall lay before them, soaring high into the air and stretching wide to either side of them, continuing past their sight and curving before vanishing into more forest, indication that something lay inside the barrier. Sharp and hand sized, the wicked looking thorns would be a strong deterrent to almost any predator who attempted to breach it. Though the spikelike, jagged dark thorns were immediately menacing, they contrasted sharply to the deep crimson shades of fragrant roses buried within them, the blood color standing out brilliantly against the deep velvet blackness of the vines and the shadows they contained. Both beautiful and deadly, the pale stood silently, seemingly impenetrable. 

"This is not quite what I remember of Naraku's castle," Miroku commented, voice polite but with a touch of dry humor that earned him a dirty look from the hanyou. "Unless Naraku has recently taken up gardening as a hobby." 

Folding his arms, Inuyasha sniffed the wind, trying to trace the scent that led him there, but made a face as the heady natural perfume of living red roses pervaded his senses, blotting out everything. He resisted the urge to sneeze at it all. "It's not Naraku's castle. But he's been here before. Something's wrong with his stink though." A grimace formed on Inuyasha's face as he tried to place what was wrong with it. It was slightly off, though unmistakably Naraku's. Kagura and the other detachments, with the exception of the scentless Kanna, reeked of their 'parent,' but even then there were very tiny, subtle differences, particularly with Kagura, who seemed to also have a trace of a wind-scent to her. In a wrong way, he supposed that made sense. This, though, was definitely Naraku. The same clashing of youkai smells. All the damn smelly flowers were stinking up the place and interfering with his nose, and he didn't like it. He was never sure of how to describe that kind of stink- an uncomfortable clashing of many different smells, provided from many different youkai, all jammed into one horrific stench he hated to have to identify, though ended up trying to follow all too often. If snakes smelled like anything other than dirt and whatever they were crawling through recently, he wondered if that would be something like what Naraku smelled like. A viper. 

Why was this vaguely different? Naraku was made up of a lot of youkai, and his smell was from a lot of youkai. Sometimes he got rid of them, replacing them with stronger ones. 

Asking no one in particular, he said, "If Naraku switches around youkai to get stronger, that'd change his stink after awhile, wouldn't it?" 

"Youkai should all have their own scents, the way all youki is slightly different, even in the same breed of youkai," Sango offered, trying to remember what she'd been taught. "Though we can't usually distinguish them, being human. Inuyasha, are you trying to say the smell is old?" 

"I don't know. I just followed the stench," Inuyasha sniffed, but was feeling a bit more certain of it. 

With a frown, Miroku took the end of his shakujou and poked it into the thorns, intending to measure out their given depth. Small fragments of light filtered through the uppermost of the heavy floral weaving, unlike the darkness of the lower portions they faced at eye level. It clicked faintly against something solid before the still vines moved, snapping outward and wrapping around the staff, grabbing at it in attempt to break the intruder in half. 

"Sankontetsusou!" 

Inuyasha's claws ripped through the rose vines, and Miroku freed his shakujou with a jerk, almost stumbling backward from the sudden lack of force. "Strange," the houshi commented thoughtfully as he righted himself and clasped the staff in both hands, quickly checking to see if it was damaged. A few scratch marks were gouged into the surface, almost halfway up the pole. He hefted it a bit for the others to see. "It seems to go fairly deep." 

With a frown, Inuyasha's next motion was to go for the hilt of Tetsusaiga, ready to blast the thing apart in order to break through as it settled back into its former position, leafy vines curling more thickly where it had been prodded. 

"Inuyasha, wait!" Kagome interrupted, moving forward to stop him. "We don't know what's on the other side of that thing!" 

"So?" 

Kagome sighed, trying to think of a way to convince Inuyasha to not simply blow the thing away. It was Sango who suggested something more reasonable. Glancing upward, the trees provided only a narrow expanse before the wall began, and she looked at Kirara with a thoughtful frown, considering the firecat's blinking red eyes before turning to Shippou, who was wide eyed and staring at the wall on Kagome's shoulder. "Shippou, do you think you could float up there and see what's inside? It looks like there's more light coming from the top. There may be no dome, or at least enough space to see through. Think you can handle it?" 

The kitsune blinked as he considered the request, eyeing the barrier nervously and wishing he was on the ground so that he could edge away. Still perched on Kagome's shoulder, he was at the level of everyone else, and had to look back at them. Get accusing glances or try to float up over a living wall of sharp pointy objects that might want to kill him? His mouth went dry as he agreed and reached for a leaf in his jacket. "I...I can try...." 

Half unsheathed, Inuyasha stuffed his sword back into its scabbard with a grunt as Shippou poofed into a pink ball and began to work his way upward parallel to the wall. He almost disappeared into the thin stripe of bright sunlight that came between the treeline and the barrier of thorns, the light colors melting together. Topping the wall, he hovered for a moment, then below they heard a shriek as he popped back out of the transformation and fell, caught by the tail by Inuyasha. Not even bothering to protest the pulling, Shippou was squirming in Inuyasha's grip and shouting rapidly in a shaky voice, "There's a castle and a bunch of people, and they're all _dead!_" 

His tail was promptly released, and out came Tetsusaiga. Taking a step back as Shippou scurried back to the relative safety around Kagome, Inuyasha aimed for the tangle of thorns in front of them. 

"Kaze no Kizu!" 

Lines of golden light raced forward from the swinging arc of the sword, shearing apart the suddenly overwhelmed barrier and tearing through it. There was another sound as it impacted on something other than plants, and a cloud of stone chips exploded upward and out, blotting out the light for a moment and causing them all to shield their faces until the dust settled and the pulverized rocks finished raining down. Coughing, Kagome lowered her sleeve from her eyes and saw Inuyasha doing the same, moving forward through the gap he had created. 

They hurried forward through the archway of flowers, moving quickly to avoid the rustling vines that writhed to their sides, crackling as they shifted. The breach was wide enough, though narrowed as rocks began to slip down into the newly created gap. To Kagome's surprise, they emerged into what seemed to be a blind alley, the slope roofed buildings to either side of them with blast marks scarring the outsides, paint chipped away and in some places, the wood had buckled. Both structures would have been flattened if not for the thick wall they had run through to enter.   


Kirara had turned around and was hissing at the way they came, though not transforming yet. Inside, heads turned to see the cut Inuyasha had placed in the roses steadily weaving itself back together more tightly, black vines growing anew and meshing with the scarred ends that had not been ripped apart in the blast. New red blossoms unfurled as the fencing grew thicker and darker, disallowing any light to creep through, to keep the patch of covering where the stone wall behind it was gone. After a moment, it grew still. 

"It fixed itself," Kagome realized aloud, voicing what they were seeing and backing away slightly, withdrawing. If Inuyasha could blast his way through it once, she was sure he could again, but couldn't help but hope they weren't trapped inside the thorns. 

With a frown, Inuyasha tried sniffing the air again. There was nothing unusual, other than the enveloping scent of pungent flowers, now manifold and not merely roses. The scent of chrysanthemums lay lightly atop other fragrances, delicately. Wisteria and poppies, violets and snapdragons. If everyone inside this place was dead, he should be picking up on the smell of spilled blood or decomposing rot, even with the strong flowery stink interfering. Trying to trace what Shippou claimed to have seen, he turned away, leaving the regenerating wall for later. "Oy, Shippou, where are all these dead people?" Inuyasha demanded, drawing their attention away from where they entered. "I don't smell blood or..." he trailed off, looking around the plaza area he had just entered. 

Across the space, there was a line of coniferous trees, green since their needles remained that way year round. No scent reached him from these, since there was no wind. Buildings, most appearing to be houses, formed a ring expanding in the circular- or even spiral- pattern the outer wall suggested. Mosses had grown over many of the homes and workplaces, and winding vines had snaked their paths upward from the ground, crawling into windows and onto roofs, some flowering, others merely displaying broad leaves. Not only were buildings surrounded and covered by the runaway flora, but people. 

On the ground, beneath verandahs, laying in the open space of the plaza with foodstuffs spilled and rotted on the packed dirt, taken over by mushrooms. Two children lay near a lichen covered pond, a brown ball discarded not far away. An old woman sat in the doorway of her little house, sewing resting in her lap, her withered head bent as though concentrating on needlework. 

"My god..." Kagome breathed, a hand straying to her mouth. "So many people...." All across the plaza lay others, periodic rises and falls in the contour of the spreading plant life. Men, women, children...all lay at their their daily tasks. Whatever caused it, it had happened in sheer moments, catching people unaware and at work, inattentive to whatever spell was cast on them. It had to be a spell. There was no blood, no sign at all of a struggle. Only one man in light, slightly rusted looking armor lay among the fallen here. Most seemed to be working class men and women, going about everyday business. It had been fast, whatever it was, and unexpected. 

The sound of Miroku's shakujou was heard, ringing faintly in the broad silence as he moved, bending down over the nearest body, a plump young woman, and moving to make a small sign of reverence for the dead. However, he hesitated and looked more closely. She was pale, one hand curled up under her pink cheeks. Though a bit round, she was quite pretty, and it was odd that had remained even in death. Curious, he pressed two fingers against her throat, just under her jawline. After a moment, his eyes widened, and he turned to the others, calling out, "She's alive!" 

Heads lifted from their silent watch. "What?" 

"Alive," he repeated, holding a hand over her mouth and feeling a faint breath there. "She's breathing." 

Sango moved first, to one of the children playing ball, turning the boy over and holding a hand over his lips, feeling a faint, fluttering breath against her palm. "This one is too!" she added, looking around as Kagome and Shippou joined the checking, Miroku moving onto another person. 

One by one, every fallen person in the immediate area was checked, and one by one they were calling out that the unconscious person was alive. Several minutes later, they uneasily formed a loose circle amid the scattered people to talk. 

"They appear to be sleeping," Miroku concluded. 

Inuyasha snorted, folding his arms and frowning while looking around and not liking the situation. Naraku's scent had been strong enough to follow outside the walls, even if it was old, but inside there were more flowers than he had ever seen at once in his life. He recognized the scent he was following, but this did not exactly fit the usual pattern of how Naraku worked. 

People sleeping. No trickery, no betrayals, no manipulations, no attempts to corrupt the tama. "They're_ asleep?_ People don't just fall asleep all at once in the middle of the day." 

"This all feels really weird," Shippou added, looking around again. To him, this place felt like a tomb, even if they were just sleeping. "Are they all under a spell?" 

Sango's lips drew thin as she watched one of the nearby patches of flowers. Busy with the people, she hadn't noticed it before, and she, like the others, found the place eerily quiet, eyes darting around and half expecting a trap. "They'd have to be under a spell. Everything alive would have to be. Look at the flowerbed there," she pointed out, gesturing to a small field of tightly closed violets, clover hemming the edges of the deep purple petals. "Closed, as though it were night. That's not natural either." 

Taking a half step towards the patch of sleeping violets, Kagome hesitated, not wanting to get too close. Why here? Was this recent? If it was, again, why here? She didn't sense any shikon shards. There was nothing here for Naraku to want. Judging by the half-completed look of some of the more distant buildings in the plaza, it had been a growing town. Glancing up the forested hill at the town's center, the tall, multi-storied donjon of a castle rose above the tops of the pine trees that covered the gentle slope. She knew that in the sengoku jidai, the daimyo were interested in building fortifications against one another, with all the wars and fighting. Whoever this one was must have managed to gather a fair amount of money and power to him, if he was constructing a castle on the hill. However, no one in any of the towns outside the forest had even mentioned that there was a castle in there, much less a town springing up within its protective range. 

The people of the last village they had stopped at gave warnings about straying from the path- the woods were haunted with youkai! It was rumored that those who left the main road often disappeared, eaten up. That warning didn't particularly faze anyone, seeing that they were used to dealing with youkai, and the way the story was told made it sound like local superstition. Nothing to take too seriously. Until now. 

Still. There were no trails, no paths, no roads to this place. Just dense forest. People didn't build castles in the middle of forests. They built them close to trading roads and plains for crops. The entire situation didn't make any sense, not just the fact everyone inside had apparently dropped at once. 

"There must be some clue as to what happened here, somewhere," she mused aloud, keeping an eye on the donjon on top of the hill. She couldn't tell how many stories it rose, with the trees going up the slope. Overgrown footpaths could be seen not too far away, on the plaza's farther side, arches standing watch over the walkways. "There could be someone awake, or something written down somewhere. Entire towns don't just disappear into the forest without a trace, especially if Naraku's involved. There has to be some reason they're all asleep like this." 

"Don't you think it's a little too convenient that we just happened to find Naraku's smell, and then just happened to find a sleeping city in the middle of nowhere?" Inuyasha asked her, a bit of irritation in his voice. 

"You're the one who went running off chasing the smell, Inuyasha," Miroku reminded him, causing the hanyou to give him another dirty look. "Now that we're here, we may as well try to find out what Naraku thought he could accomplish in cursing these people." 

"They look like they've been asleep for a long time," Kagome said as she knelt down beside one of the boys playing ball, not far away from where they had stopped to talk. She picked a strand of moss away from his shoulder, trying not to smile at the sleeping child. "Even if these plants are youkai plants, or a part of the spell somehow like the roses on the wall, it would take a long time to cover everything as much as it is here. Even the outside area is acting strange. It's not autumn, and all the maple trees are red. It's not completely contained inside the walls." She stood up and glanced back at Inuyasha. "We should at least _try_ to see if there's anything we can do." 

Fifty years, he slept pinned to a tree, an enchanted arrow sticking from his chest. Anything they could do? Was there really anything they could do? Sleeping, sealed...how different were they, unconscious and dead to the world? He couldn't pull that damn arrow out of his chest. Kagome did that. If Naraku was the one behind all this, then it was probably a curse...and wouldn't it just piss him off if they did find a way to break it? No arrows sticking out of anyone's chests. What else broke a sealing spell other than pulling whatever started it out? He glowered. "Feh. Fine. See if there's anything you can do. But if we don't find anything, we're leaving tomorrow." 

For a moment Kagome was surprised at how quickly he gave in...she'd expected stalling and helping people to be something he'd dislike. Though again, perhaps this reminded him of their rather strange first meeting. In a somewhat veiled manner, Naraku had been behind that, too. She nodded firmly, clapped her hands together and smiled. "Great. Then let's try heading up to the castle."   
  
  
  


~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~ 

  
  
  


Konnichiwa, minna, and welcome to a new story.   
I'd always wanted to write a fic using fairy tales as a base- _For the Fairest _is the result. To make things even more interesting, as I was working on the final chapter of this story, Sango-sama issued a fairy tale challenge. So, I suppose this is my entry. ^_^   
This fic was written mainly for fun- a lite fic, one calorie, with a tiny dish of mystery to the side.   
I do not own the fairy tales of the world, as I could only dream of doing so. I do own a cute pair of Inuyasha and Kagome plushies, which are sitting on my bookshelf looking very cute while holding hands. Unfortunately, I do not own their show.   
Enjoy the tale.   
~Queen 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scriptoriumfanfics/ 


	2. they shall sleep until the spell is brok...

For The Fairest   
  


_Oh Rose, this painted Rose_   
_Is not the whole_   
_Who paints the flower_   
_Paints not its fragrant soul...._   
_-Goliards_

  
  
  
  


Chapter 2- _They Shall Sleep Until The Spell Is Broken_   
  
  


It took some time to work their way up to the main donjon of the castle, the mulit-leveled tower that overlooked the plains below the hill it had been built on. It became more and more apparent that the city, whenever it had fallen asleep, was still under construction, gaps left between houses that seemed ready for the raising of buildings. Concentric in design, growing larger as the rings of streets expanded outward, a small, decorative forest of pine trees rose behind one of the defendable, rough cut walls, adding what must have seemed like a peaceful, serene air to the place, visible to the owners of the homes that had been built, of greater size and worth than the ones closer to the plaza area they entered. These were richer homes, closer to the castle and to the daimyo who ruled there, the living spaces of retainers, vassals, and the wealthy. 

They passed over a wooden bridge, leading up to the hill the castle rested on, and found their way immediately barred by a crooked set of gateways, fortunately left open during that day, and another sign that no attack was expected from outside. Had the gates been locked, Kagome got the feeling Inuyasha would just break down the gateway to get them inside, now that they had decided on some course of action for the rest of the day. It felt almost sacrilegious to break or ruin anything of the place. The sleeping people gave her eerie the feeling it was a tomb, and to destroy something would be a desecration to the dead. She reminded herself they were not, and that now they were going to try to help them wake up. The fact that a soldier could be seen half dangling over one of the stone walls ringing the upper passageway didn't help settle her unease. He'd dropped his bow and arrows, and they lay on the hard dirt a good way below him. Had they been invaders, his vantage point would have made them easy targets, trapped inside the twin gates. 

They passed into the castle's outermost ward, and there they found many more people than on the path up to it. Men and women in sturdy worker's clothing were sprawled around, obviously in the midst of working on the castle's daily chores. The vines of roses still swarmed through the place, thicker here than in the outskirts of the town, and they picked their way through it, Miroku steadying himself with his shakujou while Kirara leapt from one thick vine to another, avoiding the more deadly looking thorns. This taking too long to just cross a courtyard, Inuyasha took out Tetsusaiga and slashed apart the thickest roots, carving a path they all quickly fell into. Unlike the outer wall, these did not grow back instantly, though rustling noises below suggested that they were either moving, or that mice had nested in the undergrowth, now upset with Inuyasha's disruption. 

After that came more gates, rimmed with heavy wooden doors banded in iron. The stone walls above them loomed heavily, and more men could be seen half on them, half sliding off from their defensive positions, the daily guard knocked out. As the geometric, curving rings of defense grew smaller, they finally emerged into the innermost ward of the castle, a three storied donjon rising high above them. Roses, buds now tightly closed as all the other blooms in the castle were, climbed the outer walls of the tower, dark green leaves unfurled in the afternoon sunlight. If it hadn't seemed so out of place, it would have looked beautiful, the rampaging flora cloaking the true color of the plastered donjon walls. 

"I guess the next step is to go in," Kagome decided, shielding her eyes from the sun and looking up at the tower's winged roofs. Sliding wooden doors slid slowly on dirt clogged slats as they pushed the front doors open, revealing the slumbering space inside as they stepped within. 

Silence hung as heavily as the curling rose vines, clinging to the roofbeams and slithering up the doorposts. Windows were speared through with age, creating dusky shafts of light that played across silently sleeping faces. Here, within the main castle, those they found reposing with closed eyes and bowed heads wore richer clothes, woven more finely and with more detail. Vibrant green leaves lay across the woven ones on the robes of the women, twisting colorfully into their long black hair. Men knelt still at low tables, ink and bamboo brushes laying across stark white paper, their fingers smudged black from their writing while heads were bowed in slumber. 

The soft sounds of the intruders footsteps and the ringing of the shakujou interrupted the quiet of decades. A thick layer of dust lay across the exposed surfaces of the wood, a part of the scenery but not truly belonging there. 

Bending down to one of the worker's tables, Miroku pushed back some of the briars scattered over a writing man and the paper he held, pinning it down. Carefully, he drew it free from the light hand placed on it, scanning the neat print on the page and ignoring the spilled pools of ink on the sheet's lower portion. The parchment was yellowed with age, curling at the ends, and he held it gingerly. "Orders for supplies, it looks like," he informed the others, who had begun to spread out themselves, picking their way among the sleepers. Shippou peered into the different sleeping faces, looking for something to do. "This looks like an order to armorers, for new helmets for whatever standing army that was being built here." 

"More of the same over here," Sango added, shuffling through some sheaves of paper she had drawn out from under a tangle of brambles on the floor. "Most of it looks military," she continued, hesitating as she came across another sheet as a startled look crossed her face for a moment. "Artists' commissions? It looks like the daimyo was hiring artists as well." 

"Were they decorating?" Shippou asked, edging his way closer to Kagome, who was tentatively testing out the wooden steps that led upstairs. They creaked under the light pressing of her foot, but remained firm. "Would they paint it?" 

Sango shrugged, filing through the papers again and sending an apologetic thought toward the nearest unconscious person. It felt almost like she was rifling through someone else's things without permission. 

After a moment, the creaking of the steps grew louder, as Kagome began to work her way up the steps, utilizing the vines to her advantage and using them as a makeshift railing to pull herself up. "Kagome! Wait!" he called, not wanting to be left behind while mincing his way over the last of the budding plants, Shippou caught himself on the wall beside the steps before heading up after the schoolgirl, who was making good time up the stairs now that she had gotten the hang of the steep steps. 

With a sigh, Inuyasha tailed the two of them, adding his weight to the old stairwell and listening to the wooden boards creak in protest with the unaccustomed weight of two adults and the child. There wasn't much for him to do on the main floor, so he may as well explore and keep an eye on Kagome too. If any of these freaky plants suddenly came alive and tried attacking, the two running off would need a rescue anyway. Common sense, of course. Feh.   


He found himself emerging into what appeared to be the daimyo's quarters, or at least his study. The floor was varnished and smooth, though dusty, and there were fewer vines that had worked their way up here. Still, the woven curtains over the windows had been torn through the years, and looked tattered. Partitions sectioned away the different areas, though there seemed to be more organization to the haphazard way people had dozed off and fallen to the floor. A line of differently aged men lay across the ground, all seeming to be headed towards a middle aged man behind a table at the room's far end, all of them holding multiple sheets of paper. 

"I think we found the daimyo," Inuyasha commented from behind, half startling Kagome, who had not heard him come up behind her. He jerked his chin toward the middle aged man at the line's end, wearing richer clothes a tall black cap on his head. A young man in armor had fallen just behind him, apparently a guard. "They all look like they're trying to talk to him." 

"They look so creepy this way," Kagome murmured quietly as Inuyasha stepped up beside her, frowning at the mess at his feet. "They couldn't have expected anything if they look like this...just like they were going about their business." 

Shippou had been creeping his way among the fallen, glancing at the papers they held. These were not decorated with words, but with drawings, and he slowly reached out and withdrew one, keeping an eye on the elderly man holding it, wary in case he should wake up at the disruption. With a quick lunge, he snatched it out of the man's hands, leaping back as though burned. When nothing happened, he sighed in relief, looking at the picture painted there more carefully. 

It was a simple sketch, surrounded in further sketches. All were of flowers, many petaled and delicate, rendered carefully and with skill on the page. From several different angles, the black and white portrait was of a chrysanthemum, the drawings attempting to capture the perfection of the subject. And it was a portrait, Shippou noticed after a moment, because in one of the smaller pictures on the page, the tiny face and bust of a woman appeared within the bloom of the petals, eyes downcast and distant, though she held a delicate and dainty beauty that was entrancing, even in the simple sketch. 

"Did you find something, Shippou-chan?" Kagome asked as she peered over Shippou's shoulder to see what caught his attention. She scanned the page for a moment, then noticed what Shippou was puzzling over. "It looks almost like fantasy art or something." 

"Fanta...what?" Shippou blinked and looked up at Kagome as she accepted the picture from him. "It looks like a youkai flower or something." 

"A youkai flower?" Kagome repeated, then tilted the picture to the side for Inuyasha to see, pointing it out. With a thoughtful frown, she asked him, "How dangerous could one be?" 

He shrugged nonchalantly as he answered. "Depends. They don't normally cause humans much trouble. Usually they leave them alone, unless some stupid ones start messing with them. They don't fight much, since they're just plants. A lot can be poisonous though." 

Shippou was pulling more sketches now that he felt more confident that his 'stealing' wouldn't cause the owner to wake up and yell at him for it. He collected a handful before flipping through them and exclaiming, "Look at all the drawings!" 

More pictures of chrysanthemums were produced, though no others with the thumb sized body inserted into the bloom. All were attempting to capture some aesthetic beauty of the flower. Some were in full blossom, others half opened as though dozing, some tightly closed in nightly sleep. Passing them on to Kagome, she showed them to Inuyasha, who was feigning disinterest in the pictures. 

The creak on the stairs behind them gave a warning before Miroku and then Sango's heads emerged into the second tier of the donjon. Kirara hopped up onto the second level as well, following Sango. "It's mostly just orders for supplies and other official work down there," Miroku told them as he reached the floor. "Nothing that seemed out of the ordinary." 

Noticing the three clustered around a sheaf of papers in Kagome's hands, Sango asked, "Did you three have any luck?" 

"Shippou found your artists," Inuyasha intoned with a bit of boredom, backing away as the other two joined the sudden spree of Show and Tell. "They're looking at pictures." 

Again, the drawings were shared, and Inuyasha edged his way towards the next set of steps leading to the donjon's highest level. When the sound of ancient wood bending again echoed in the large room, several heads lifted in time to see a streak of red vanish to the uppermost rooms. 

"Inuyasha?" Kagome called curiously after. 

A moment later, his disembodied voice echoed back down, "It's just a bunch of guards and shit up here. More plants," he finished as he dropped back to the second floor. "Just weaponry, some more sleeping guards. A couple at the windows, probably lookouts, but the others looked like they were cleaning swords or some shit like that." He folded his arms again. "I'm not seeing how going through this old crap is getting us anywhere." 

"We still have a lot to look through," Kagome defended, straightening the delicate yellow edges of the papers into a neat pile with her hands. "There's still more the castle complex, the grounds, the turrets, all kinds of places to look through...there has to be something here Naraku wanted if he put everyone to sleep." 

"Making people sleep doesn't exactly sound like Naraku's style," Inuyasha snorted, earning himself a deathly glare from Kagome. Getting the feeling he was dangerously close to an osuwari, he spluttered, "What? It's not!" 

"Maybe not," Miroku added, lifting his rosary covered hand on the shakujou ever so slightly, "but there still is more ground to cover. Even my grandfather had to upset Naraku before he laid a curse on his line. These people must have instigated Naraku in some way if he is the cause all this." 

Inuyasha was making a barely perceptible growling noise in the back of his throat, still disliking the situation. "I said we would leave tomorrow if we didn't find anything. If you want to waste the rest of the day here, go ahead." 

And so they did.   
  
  
  


~o~O~o~ 

Far away, or perhaps not so far, a figure sat in a darkened room, watching the events of the day unfold in the perfectly round reflection of a mirror. Tiny white hands held it lightly so that he may observe, their paleness standing in stark, glowing contrast to the blackness around her. If Kanna had the inclination to lift her eyes and meet the face of her 'father' of sorts, she would have seen a barely perceptible smile tracing his lips. 

All Kanna knew was that she was there to let him observe this newly unfolding little drama, and that Kagura had left their castle that morning. These things she did know, and it was enough for her to understand that Naraku had set certain events into motion again.   
  
  


~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~ 

Hm, I know, not much happening in the second chapter, though it should be fairly clear now as to what one of the fairy tales is...there will be more. ^_^   
Until next chapter.   
~Queen 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scriptoriumfanfics/ 


	3. an old fairy tale

For The Fairest 

  
  
  
  


_And when he saw her looking so lovely in her sleep,_   
_he could not turn away his eyes;_   
_and presently he stooped and kissed her,_   
_and she awaked, and opened her eyes, and looked very kindly on him...._   
_-The Sleeping Beauty, Grimm's Fairy Tales_   
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_Chapter 3- An Old Fairy Tale_   
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Night had swept across the sky, as though some midnight angel had lain a black veil across the day's blue heaven. Shadowy clouds lit by starlight stretched across the surface of a cheshire moon, making the world silvery and ethereal. 

This particular natural loveliness went unnoticed by Kagome, who was instead looking at a gigantic mess. Actually, it was a very neat mess, all organized into tables, graphs and charts, with the occasional symbol for pi inserted into it. She'd been studying her geometry again for the last half hour, and due to being tired from the day's wandering and generally not feeling like working anymore, the formulas and equations had turned into a gigantic, super organized blob on her paper, which was smeared by erasure marks and fresher scribbles. The latest doodle was of a smiley face, which she was idly adding dog ears to for some incoherent reason. Finished looking at the circle with a line for a mouth, dots for eyes, and triangles for ears, she began to smudge it back out of existence with her eraser. Inuyasha was pacing restlessly around now that it was evening, and she didn't really want to know what he'd say if he caught her drawing what could be mistaken as a tacky rendition of of him. 

She began to doodle Shippou instead, who was running around playing in the clearing before her. They'd spent the entire day scouring the castle and the adjacent turrets, finding all kinds of interesting things. None of which, unluckily, seemed to have anything to do with the sleeping community. Slowly, each of them had begun to adapt a little bit to the constant presence of the sleeping people, though it remained eerie. They'd chosen the only empty room available as that night's camp, no one wanting to remove the brambles over a sleeper and then move them. It would be like moving the dead, though not dead. A little more comfortable with being there, but there was still a line no one really wanted to cross. It was just too creepy. 

The empty room was fairly large, a lofty ceiling with hanging vines draping from it with more closed, bell shaped flowers. It had taken a little while to clear away the floor, but the varnished wood had eventually been revealed, and they'd set up for the night. Set inside one of the castles' connected turrets, it was on the base level of the structure, and with all the covered tables, paper and drawing equipment that had been found there during the floral removal, it was easy to guess this was the artists' makeshift studio. All of the said artists must have been on the donjon's second level when the spell took effect, leaving it empty. 

When the sun set, they ate. Kagome still had a couple cups of instant ramen left, which of course made Inuyasha rather pleased. They'd found a kitchen and a working well in another section of the complex, though any food laying around was stale or spoiled. Right now, she could hear the murmuring sounds of Sango and Miroku laying out sleeping rolls, and uprighting the room's partitions, which had been folded and tucked away into a corner. She'd taken the opportunity to slip away and try to get some homework done. It had only taken a couple minutes for it to turn into the merciless Blob of Math. A few minutes later, a bored Shippou emerged, with Kirara following. The firecat curled up on the porch, her twin tails over her nose gracefully, and closed her eyes for sleep. 

The artist's room was set up toward the back of the turret, opening onto a small verandah and then leading to a sloping hill. Just beyond the tilting land, she could make out patterns, evidence of a garden. Before her though, the grass was thick and heavy, though she was still able to see Shippou running around and chasing one of the multitude of fireflies that lived in the woodsy area, attracted to the plants and to the water that had to be feeding them, hovering like a blinking cloud. Shippou had apparently made a game of it, running around and trying to capture some of the glowing bugs. So far, he'd been unsuccessful. 

There was a light thumping noise beside her, accompanied a, "Feh." Inuyasha sat himself down on the next roof support beam along the verandah's ledge, tucking Tetsusaiga against his shoulder and trailing one leg off the edge. He cut his eyes at her, taking in the oversized book with squiggly lines and the sheets of notebook paper in her hands. "Tests?" 

Just the one word was enough. "Studying for them, yeah," she admitted, setting aside her pencil and giving the paper a frustrated look, before caving in with a defeated sigh and just shutting it altogether. "It just looks like a mess of numbers right now though...I can't concentrate here." 

"Why? They're so important to you all the rest of the time." 

Kagome gave him a narrow look. "Mou...did you come here to pick a fight?" 

"Feh." 

She shook her head and leaned up against the nearest support post, resting against the wooden beam and she half closed her eyes, looking out across the miniature forest spread out in front of them. Behind the verandah's clearing, thicker grasses grew, and there was evidence of a stepping stone trail leading into the denseness, a garden gone to wild, placed there for aesthetic purposes, somewhere for the daimyo or his wife to stroll and enjoy the scenery. It would have been a calm place, soothing rather than the constant unnerving feeling of being awake among so many sleepers. Kagome wondered how bad the garden had become, with no one tending to it for what seemed to be quite awhile. 

A wall of roses, all built up and surrounding a sleeping castle. Vaguely, it reminded Kagome of a story she had read a long time ago. What was it again? A foreign fairy tale Mama had probably told her sometime when she was little. Something about a sleeping castle, cursed along with it's princess, who would only awaken to the first kiss of true love. 

"Sleeping Beauty." 

"Eh?" Inuyasha's ears pricked up a bit at Kagome's softly spoken words. 

She shifted a bit, keeping an eye on the playing kitsune. He was looking a bit defeated at the moment, shoulders slumping over as he seemed to give up, heading back towards the steps where Kagome and Inuyasha sat. "Sleeping Beauty. It reminds me of this place," she told him, making a small gesture at the area. "It's an old fairy tale from somewhere in Europe." 

"Europe?" Inuyasha repeated, not knowing where she meant. Shippou, though, took that moment to get interested in something other than chasing floating fireflies. Curious, he asked, 

"It's a story?" 

She arched her eyebrows, putting her chin in her hand and considering thoughtfully. "You want to hear it?" 

This apparently was enough to get his mind off of his lost game of catch with the fireflies. Perked up a bit, he exclaimed, "Yeah!" 

Kagome smiled, then looked up at the sky for a moment as she tried to sort out the tale in her head. Shippou sat himself down on the step below her, watching her face and waiting expectantly for the story to be told, while Inuyasha grumpily folded his arms around Tetsusaiga, not really caring about stupid fairy tales, even if they did somehow resemble what was going on here. 

After a moment, Kagome slowly began, "Once upon a time, there was a great kingdom with a good king and queen. The queen had a baby daughter, and they invited all the fairies in the land to come to the celebration of her birth. But unfortunately, one of the fairies was not invited, missed by the lord's servants. All the good fairies began to give the new little princess a gift. She was given things like beauty, grace, wisdom and kindness by the different fairies. Right before the last fairy gave her a gift, the uninvited fairy stormed into the party, furious because she found out she was not given an invitation." 

Shippou was listening intently, head tilted to the side to watch Kagome as she spoke, remembering a little more as she went along, making hand gestures expressively, to make her points. Trying to keep his eyes in the sky and bored looking, Inuyasha slipped a glance at her animated storytelling, though not really seeing what this had to do with anything at all. 

"The evil fairy was so angry because she wasn't invited, she placed a curse on the princess, saying that she would prick her finger on a spindle and die when she became..." Kagome halted, trying to remember what year it was. After a faltering moment, she continued, a note of question in her voice, "When she turned fifteen? But she would die. Then the evil fairy laughed and left the party since she had her revenge. 

"Then last good fairy stepped forward. She hadn't given her gift yet, but though she couldn't undo the evil fairy's curse, she could soften it. So the last good fairy cast a spell saying that the princess wouldn't die, but sleep, for a hundred years." Kagome finished that portion with a firm nod, feeling surer of that number. "The princess grew up to be all the things a princess should be. Beautiful and graceful and kind. After the curse had been placed, her father the king had all the spinning wheels...." 

"Spinning wheels?" Shippou interrupted. 

Kagome halted in her story, and tried to conjure in her mind the image of a spinning wheel. "It's a big wheel...and you sit next to it...and run wool and things through it, to make thread and cloth. The spindle...that's a sharp thing that holds the fabric you use. Or make...I'm not sure. I think it's what's before you run it through the wheel," she demonstrated, as though there were a gigantic wheel in front of her, and she were running it. 

"All the spinning wheels were burned. But on her fifteenth birthday, the princess went exploring the castle, and found a room in the highest tower. One of the spinning wheels had been missed!" She clapped her hands together, and Shippou's eyes rounded slightly. Kagome reached out with a hand, as though about to touch something. "She was so curious about it, since she had never seen a spinning wheel, that she reached out to touch it. She pricked her finger on the spindle," Kagome jerked her hand as though startled, staring at it. Then she grinned a little down at Shippou and said, "And instantly fell into a deep, deep sleep. All the good fairies had been waiting for this to happen, and they came back to the castle, using their magic to put everyone to sleep, along with the princess in the tower." 

"There's only soldiers in the tower here," Inuyasha commented, keeping his eyes on the topmost tower, which he could just make out over the sloping rooftop of the turret they were staying in. "No princesses." 

Kagome lifted her eyebrows, surprised he'd been listening. Instead of speaking to Shippou for a moment, she kept her eyes on Inuyasha as she continued, "The fairies also knew that people might come to the castle and disturb the ones sleeping, so they made a giant wall of roses around everything to protect them. That's what reminds me of this place, Inuyasha. The rose wall and the sleeping people." 

"Feh." 

She shook her head, then looked at Shippou. "A hundred years passed, and people in the countryside told stories about the enchanted castle and the princess inside. Many tried to get through, but none could for a hundred years. One prince decided he wanted to try, because he wanted to see the sleeping princess for himself. Since it had been a hundred years, it was time for the spell to be broken, and the prince was the only one who was able to get through all the thorns. He got inside, and found the princess in the tower." 

Kagome hesitated dramatically for a moment, one finger in the air as though pointing. "There is only one way to break a sleeping spell. When the prince saw the princess sleeping, he instantly fell in love with her, and leaned down to kiss her. When he did, the spell was broken, and everyone inside the castle woke up. The prince and princess were married, and they lived happily ever after."   
  
"There's still no princesses in the castle," Inuyasha repeated stoutly, scowling at Kagome and Shippou now. "And no one to kiss them even if there were. That's a stupid story." He decided, and returned to his observations in the night sky. 

No one to kiss them even if there were? Kagome gripped the pile of books in her hand a little tightly, digging her nails into the cardboard cover of the textbook, biting her lip to keep a smile off her face. Somehow, that made her feel a bit good, a little warm in her chest and on her cheeks. Princesses were supposed to have their appointed princes, and she was glad there seemed to be no random damsel in distress for them to awaken in the traditional way here. Though that still left them with the problem of not having a clue of how to wake these people up. They'd found nothing, and it bothered her. They would be turning in to sleep soon, and leaving in the morning without having helped at all. It almost would have been easier if there had been a princess in the tower. It was a romantic story, but actually walking through a coincidental recreation of it was strange, and somewhat frightening. If she didn't have Inuyasha or the others along with her, she wondered how much more nervous she would be. Either way, it would be over at dawn tomorrow, unless something appeared in the night. 

She was interrupted by a muted gasp from Shippou, who was sitting with his eyes crossed in front of her, making a great attempt to get a look at the firefly that had just alighted on his nose. It was comical, the little kitsune trying to stare at the bug while he slowly raised his arms, half flapping them, as he moved his hands to catch it. 

"I got it, I got it..." he began to half chant, then jerked his hands together over his nose, just as the firefly took off again, floating out of reach as he smacked himself in the face, toppling over backwards. 

Inuyasha snorted, half grinning as Shippou turned red and rubbed his offended nose, then saw the hanyou's amusement. "Oy! Stop laughing at me!" 

The chuckling stopped as Inuyasha shrugged, looking bored again. "Why? You just whacked yourself in the face." The kitsune balled up his fists, though was looking embarrassed as well as angry. 

"Inuyasha..." Kagome began warningly, finally setting aside her textbook beside her pencil on the verandah. 

"What?" 

She opened her mouth to osuwari him, then changed her mind with a sigh. It seemed a little pointless at the moment for some reason, and she was feeling a bit too tired to just yell. Lowly, she grumbled as she ran a hand through her hair, "Never mind." 

He blinked at her a moment, realizing she gave up for the time being. Shippou had taken the moment to hop off the steps, and was now making a serious contest out of catching one of the floating insects, apparently his way of showing that he could too catch one, and not look like an idiot by smacking himself in the nose. A serious expression was on his face as she chased them around, Kagome blearily watching him, Inuyasha blankly staring, knowing he really didn't have anything else to do. Two voices were still steadily murmuring behind them, the din of sleeping preparations complete. After a moment, Sango's agitated voice was raised, then some soothing sounds came from Miroku, minus the customary crack of Sango's hand on his face. She must have caught him before he managed anything, Kagome thought distantly, half closing her eyes, ready for sleep. A cool breeze rippled through the yard, and she hugged herself for a moment, eyelids drooping further. She really should go inside for bed. Keeling over outside wouldn't be the best of ideas.... 

"Oy! Shippou!" Inuyasha suddenly snapped, jolting Kagome out of her vague doze. The hanyou was on his feet, and she looked up in time to see some of the growth of weeds rustle, where the slope of the hill led out of sight. "Shippou! Get your ass back here!" 

The sound of someone sticking out their tongue and mocking him was the reply, which just pissed Inuyasha off further. Kagome rubbed her eyes and stood, heading quickly after Inuyasha as he tore off into the undergrowth, intending to catch the kitsune and haul him back. It was a bad idea for Shippou to go running off on his own, even if the area seemed safe enough, though creepy. Inuyasha would probably grab Shippou by the tail and drag him out, which would start another fight, and someone would have to stop it. 

"Kagome-chan?" Sango stuck her head out the door, hearing the noise. "What's going on?" 

"Shippou ran off into the weeds," she replied before she passed into the line of brambles herself. "I'm going to stop Inuyasha from pulverizing him. Be right back," she waved quickly. 

"Wait, I'll come with you," Sango started to say, and she reached inside for hiraikotsu. Kagome, though, had already waded into the unruly grasses. With a sigh, she turned back within to see Miroku watching her with a curious expression on his face, hands full of the transcripts they found earlier that day. "Kagome-chan just took off after Inuyasha and Shippou." 

He shook his head and stood, setting aside the papers and reaching for his shakujou with resignation. "I suppose this means you think we should go after them?" 

With a brusque nod, she turned away and asked, "Kirara?" The firecat's head sleepily lifted from where she was curled up, mewing at the sound of her sleep's interruption, who was hefting her weapon. "Come on. Hopefully this won't take too long."   
  
  


~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~ 

  


So the fairy tale is told, and we have just a touch of Inuyasha/Kagome waffiness...::sighs:: Ah, I admit it, I'm hopelessly unromantic. This chapter is mostly to introduce the European story of _Sleeping Beauty _into the sengoku jidai, and to set up the happenings in a good portion of the rest of the fic...I know, it's moving rather slow, but the pace will start to pick up soon. ^_^ A bit more waff in the future (how rarely do I put anything in a romance category? even if it is the secondary category?) and the introduction of the other fairy tale in this fic.   
The version of _Sleeping Beauty_ that Kagome tells is the Grimm's version, not Disney's. According to my lovely book here, the princess was fifteen, not sixteen, and there were several fairies, not three plus the 'evil fairy.' ^_^   
Until next time.   
~Queen   


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scriptoriumfanfics/   
  



	4. in the garden of good and evil

For The Fairest   
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_Rosa que al prado, encarnada_   
_te ostentas presuntuosa_   
_de grana y carmin banada:_   
_campa lozana y gustosa;_   
_pero no, que siendo hermosa_   
_tambien seras desdichada___

_(Red rose growing in the meadow,_   
_you vaunt yourself bravely,_   
_bathed in crimson and carmine;_   
_a rich and fragrant show._   
_But no: Being fair, you will be unhappy soon.)_   
_-Juana Ines de la Cruz, 1651-1695_   
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_Chapter 4- In The Garden of Good and Evil___

With the slight breeze picking up, the fireflies had drifted closer to their wooded home, and Kagome found herself emerging out of a barrier of weeds and into an overgrown footpath of stepping stones, curving around through an archway of interlocked sakura tree branches. What seemed like merely another wild area, an overgrown garden, probably worse than the rest of the castle complex, was actually clearer. No weeds were tangled in the grasses at her feet, or in the beds of tightly coiled flowers that lay delicately on the edge of the narrow slope. Invisible crickets chirped in the dips of the earth, and fireflies danced in the open spaces, twirling and setting the sylvan glade alight with their quiet ballet. With the cool breeze stirring, they had retreated here, and Shippou, apparently overcoming his fear of the sleeping people, had chased them down. 

Looking back and forth on her path, she didn't see any disruption to the lay of the garden, evidence of the kitsune or the hanyou crashing through. "Inuyasha? Shippou?" she hesitated, then repeated, louder, "Inuyasha? Inuyasha, where are you?" 

"Kagome?" the answer was muffled, and then there was a rustling noise as some hanging willow branches were swept aside by a sweep of Inuyasha's arm. Looking irritated, Inuyasha emerged from a thicket, and before the loose leaves of the willow veiled the area behind him again, she caught a glimpse of moonlight on water. The sound of crickets and the thick heaviness of the air muted the sound of small waves lapping at the edges of a pool. Frustrated, Inuyasha yanked a couple twigs out of his hair, tossing them aside. There were too many damned flowers all over the place, stinking up the air and plugging up any scent trail Shippou would have left. It was the same way through the rest of the castle, and it bothered him already. "I don't know where the hell he went," he began to say, then hesitated, seeing an oddly soft look cross Kagome's face as she glanced around their surroundings. "Kagome?" 

Her eyes looked distant, and she could feel her skin begin to prickle slightly, though not unpleasantly. There was a mystical air to the garden, and she could feel it soaking into her, flowing through the cool currents of damp air. The air seemed more like breath than wind, as though the garden of flowers were alive, a slumbering person as well, and the calm of the place was its sleeping aura, and the fireflies that aura's divine glow. She placed a hand to the red knot of her green collar, and it felt oddly warm through the fabric. "Isn't it beautiful?" she asked him, her voice somewhat distant, echoing as she looked around the weblike trees, ornamented with the stars between their branches, hung like icicles on evergreens. 

"Kagome?" he repeated, looking at her suspiciously, ears twitching as he grew more curious and slowly edged closer as a small smile formed on her face. She was acting weird. 

"I think it's okay," she began, taking a deep breath and answering him at last. "This place...it feels different from the rest of the castle. It feels so empty there. I almost didn't notice it. This place...it feels different. Almost..." she shook her head like she was trying to understand the cascade of floating magics that were pressing past her. Hesitantly, she reached forward with a hand, and at the last moment, snapped out her fingers in a loose cage, catching a glowing firefly within them. Inside the web of her fingers, it settled down, having so abruptly found a place to rest. Kagome's smile broadened as she opened her hand, cupping the insect and letting its light flow up into her face and eyes, casting them in pale gold. "Almost glowing." 

He blinked at her, standing there smiling and holding a cup of golden light in her curved hands, a similar display laid out in the darkness behind her, holding the multitude of shadowy places in the trees at bay. It poured from her fingertips, glowing, golden, lighting her face and touching the strands of her hair, warming her eyes, reflecting, glowing, illuminating. Breathlessly glowing. It seemed as though she could light the world with such a shine, touch it and cast away the shadows that cover the spirit. The fireflies were like candles, shining, dimming, only to glow again more brightly, divine and natural and ethereal. 

Here was silent. Far away, quiet, distant, safe. Glowing. She lifted her hands, as the fireflies beyond her twirled, darting away and returning to illuminate her. She seemed so delicate that way, something that should be kept safe, protected. And yet...he could only see it, the magic she was sensing, as beautiful as it must seem to her. This place was different from the rest of the castle, though it did not feel so glowing to him. Rather, it felt heavy, thick somehow, though he could see what she was sensing on her smiling, gentle face. Maybe it was because she was a miko, or a human. It was possible this place just didn't like youkai, and so excluded him from understanding whatever aura it was she was feeling. 

She saw a slow scowl form on his features and tried not to laugh. Always typical. "Inuyasha, did you ever catch fireflies when you were little?" she asked him, snapping his attention away from whatever dark thoughts he was starting to get. 

"What does that have to do with..." he started, then stopped as Kagome grabbed his hand, gently brushing the insect on her fingers into his palm. He stared at it, blinking for a moment, suddenly awkward over the fact Kagome was supporting his rougher hands with hers, and now he held the glowing light. She made him curl his hands around it, and gave him a warning as she stepped back, letting him hold it on his own. 

"Be careful. They're fragile, so don't squish it or break its wings." 

"Oh," he managed, looking at the little creature as the light died away again. It began crawling around, and somehow, he found himself fighting off a grin. It was stupid to think about it, but the damn thing tickled when it moved. Shaking himself to snap out of it, he looked up to see Kagome slowly working her way down the path, and after a moment, stand on her toes and reach up into the air, gently clapping her hands and claiming another glowing firefly. Golden light unfolded in her hands as she drew them close to her again, and she suppressed a light giggle as the insect legs ran over her delicate skin, tickling. 

"You know, when I was little, Souta and I would try to catch these around the trees at home?" she told him, half stating, half questioning, as she backed deeper into the garden, deciding that they really should find Shippou soon, as peaceful as this was. The hanyou was still staring at the insect he held, occasionally glancing at Kagome from under his eyebrows to see what she was doing, walking slowly and talking distractedly to the bug more than to him. "They like the trees, and water. I think I heard somewhere that the lights are supposed to be some way to help them find mates. But I was just little when I heard it. Sometimes kids make stories up," she sighed, tossing her hands lightly into the air and sending her trapped firefly back into the night sky. It hovered for a moment, then the light disappeared into the stars. 

That was not a story he had heard. As a child, he had only been told: fireflies carried the spirits of the dead. They were souls of those long gone, floating and hovering, reminding those living of the shortness, though perhaps also the beauty, of life. Not so unlike the out of season sakura blossoms that were blooming further down the path, their pink and white petals not yet drifting to the ground in a soft, warm snow. They seemed beautiful, but holding it seemed different when he thought about it that way. It drained away the beauty somehow, even though Kagome seemed so very alive among them. He cast aside the firefly in his hands, not as gently as Kagome had, though not hard enough to harm it. It disappeared into the weaving willow fronds, leading to the pond he had passed, seeking out the water. 

She looked back at him again, watching him discard its glow. Her smile faded, though grew resigned. "We probably should find Shippou, though. I think it's okay here, but he might get lost even if he found the path in the first place." 

With a silent nod, Inuyasha started forward, and Kagome fell into step beside him. 

  


On the far side of the garden's pond, Shippou was among the slumbering flowers, which seemed to be about his height when he knelt down. Stretching around a bend of the watery pool, many colored flowers grew, their colors haunting in the darkness of the night, light given and reflected a bit more strongly there from the pond. It's moonlit reflection shone upward into his face, flickering with the breeze brushing the surface and distorting the otherwise mirror smoothness of the water. It was this way that Kagome and Inuyasha found him not too many minutes later, eyes locked on the plants and bending down while nodding emphatically, as though considering something of grave importance. 

"Oy! Shippou! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Inuyasha shouted as Kagome broke into a light run for the last few lengths of their walk, hurrying over to the kitsune, who was scurrying up to greet them and waving his hands, opening his mouth to speak, but cut off by Kagome as she bent down beside him, scolding. 

"Shippou-chan, you shouldn't run off like that! It's not safe out here by yourself, you know that!" 

"Yeah, but," he protested, pointing at the flowery display of pale yellow beside them, "look what I found! It's all right," Shippou said, turning back to the flowers encouragingly. "Come out again. Kagome won't hurt you, but Inuyasha might step on you if he can't see you." 

"Oy!" came the sharp, immediate protest, followed by Inuyasha stepping forward threateningly, an arm out to grab the kitsune, who squeaked and began to back away. 

"Osuwari." 

Splat. 

"Bitch!" 

There was a rustling from deep within the shroud of closed chrysanthemums, and she tried ignoring Inuyasha's furious shouting behind her to see what was emerging. Slowly and almost shyly, something peered out from within the darkness of the shielding blooms. Settled within a cup of pale yellow petals, there emerged a tiny body, no larger than a thumb. Hair the shade of a raven wing fell smoothly down her back and over her bare arms, cascading into the many layers of petals which curled around her tiny half human body. 

A moment later, a pair of glittering, bright emerald eyes opened to look into her own.   
  
  
  


~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~   


  


And so the second fairy tale is introduced.   
There are references to several fairy tales in here, some more blatant than others..._Sleeping Beauty_ is obvious, and the second one will be making itself known in the next chapter. Rather than a European fairy tale, the next one is Japanese.   
Has anyone out there ever gone out to catch fireflies? Mm, brings back memories of warm, late summer evenings.   
I know the chapter is short, but I wrote this fic in spurts. Bear with me a bit longer, ne?   
~Queen 


	5. pale yellow narcissus

For The Fairest 

  
__

_'Tis an unweeded garden_   
_That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature_   
_Possess it merely._   
_-Hamlet, 1.2.135-37_

  
  
  
__   
__

_Chapter 5- Pale Yellow Narcissus_   
  


They were deep green eyes, flecked with gossamer gold, wide and doelike in appearance, framed with the dark of heavy lashes. She was a delicate thing, elfin and eerily beautiful, in an inhuman way. Those eyes watched her audience widely, taking in the way Shippou was grinning at his discovery, the way Kagome was beginning to beam at the idea they had found a living, conscious person, and the way Inuyasha was swearing as he peeled himself out of the somewhat overgrown earth. A small, petite frown marred her brow as she turned away from the snarling hanyou, and returned her attentions to the much more polite seeming girl. 

"You are human?" she asked in a tentative voice, soft as clouds. Her eyes flicked again to Inuyasha, then Shippou. "Humans do not so often travel with youkai, so I thought. Though this little one," the heavy bloom of her body motioned toward Shippou, "was very kind in his words. That one seems rather vulgar." 

Inuyasha bristled. "Feh! Who the hell are you?" 

The little creature hedged away, curling defensively back into the shadows as the vines that lay around began to writhe rapidly, as though agitated, raising from the ground as though to attack. Shippou grabbed onto Kagome's arm as Inuyasha reflexively went for the hilt of Tetsusaiga. The fireflies winked out once the rustling in the trees picked up, as though the clattering of the branches were some unintelligible tongue, crackling an alarm. "Ah, gomen, gomen," Kagome held up her hands peaceably, apologizing rapidly as the flora prickled up around them. "Inuyasha's just rude...don't mind him. Your garden is so beautiful, and we really don't want to fight. If you're doing this, please stop, we'd love to talk more with you!" 

The noisy clanging of branches dimmed to a whisper, as leaves scratched against each other, hesitating in indecision. In the brief pause, Inuyasha's head swiveled to the side, picking up the sound of approaching voices growing louder. 

"Inuyasha! Kagome-chan!" 

Struggling sounds came from the darkness, then Miroku stumbled into view, tugging his robes out of the gnarled grips of brambles and branches. Sango emerged a moment later, trying to hack back at the shrubbery with hiraikotsu, while the more conveniently small Kirara wriggled out from under a tangle of thick surface roots. Judging by the tangles and snarls in their hair and clothing, they had not been so fortunate to stumble into the path around the garden, and had been fighting their way through the thickets. 

Very quietly, Kagome heard the words, "More came?" as the defending plants retreated, leaving the newcomers free of hindrance. Miroku, Sango and Kirara, released now, saw Kagome kneeling beside a bed of flowers, and Inuyasha warily keeping an eye on the slow withdrawal of the thorned, blackish rose vines, a hand still ready to draw his sword. They did not speak, but rather cast glances, first at Inuyasha, who turned back towards Kagome and whatever it was she and Shippou were looking at. He edged back toward the girl and the kitsune, and the movement seemed like a silent confirmation for them to look, but to be careful. Whatever it was they had found could be dangerous- though perhaps it was not best to be declaring that out loud.   


More faces presented themselves before the lady in the pale yellow chrysanthemum, who was again emerging from the shadows to see the newcomers. They were easy to see, either kneeling or bending down more closely to see her, eyes wide as they searched for whatever it was so fascinating the human girl dressed so strangely. Her eyes roamed across the line of wanderers, and she mused a little space as her gaze moved past Shippou, Inuyasha, then Kirara, tallying the number presenting themselves. "One, two, three youkai...child kitsune, crude canine, fire feline..." Then she lifted her eyes to look at the humans. "One, two, three humans, female, female..." her voice hesitated as she blinked at Miroku, taking in his houshi robes and the shakujou in his hand. A most delighted smile suddenly altered her otherwise hesitant face, and her hands flew to her cheeks as though embarrassed, a red flush crossing beneath her hands, visible enough to cause Miroku to stare, and the girls and Shippou to suddenly look at him, trying to figure out what caused the abrupt change in attitude in the flower. 

"Forgive me for my rudeness," she suddenly stuttered, bowing quickly while the surrounding defensive flora withdrew completely. "It has been so long since I have received any who serve the Buddha! Some used to come visit me so often! Tell me, did you search to find me? Are you a poet? An artist? Ai-ya," she sighed blissfully, "it has been far too long since anyone has come to admire me...." emerald eyes glittering hopefully up at the houshi, who was trying to assess the situation and say something fitting, without causing them problems. If this was a youkai flower, then it was very likely she was the one controlling all the local plant life, and therefore could cause them a lot of trouble if she decided she did not want them in her castle. Of course, she was an extremely beautiful youkai flower.... 

"My lady, I am Miroku, humble servant of the Buddha, and I am afraid that rumor of your most exquisite beauty..." when her already beaming smile swelled proudly on her face, he decided this definitely was the right way to go, despite the very sour looks the rest of the group were now giving him. The flower, though, was absolutely preening, extending her petals to reveal their fullest yellow blossom. "...has not reached far outside these castle walls. We had to fight our way through a dangerous fence of roses in order to reach you. However, we are very glad to have found you here. Ah," he sighed dramatically, "it is a pity you are so small, my lady. If you were not, I would be tempted to ask you to bear my child...." 

The chrysanthemum's hands flew from her cheeks to her mouth, and she was visibly suppressing a delighted giggle, not noticing the continued sour looks from the rest of the group, and the one quickly-growing-livid member wielding what could be used as a giant weed-whacker. She did not, though, and shyly drew away so that the shadows clung about her like a dramatic- and deliberate- cloak. "Ah, houshi-sama, I don't think I've ever been given such an odd marriage proposal before, but if my heart were not already held, I would perhaps be inclined to accept," she blushed, still half hiding her face in her hands with embarrassment. 

"Marriage proposal, eh?" Sango asked in a slightly caustic tone, standing up straight and glowering down at the houshi, who was trying not to have a coughing fit. Hearing someone else talk turned the flower away from her pose, and she looked upward at Sango, her petals closing a bit more tightly as she talked to a woman, dressed in a fairly ordinary, if somewhat battered kimono, evidence of having been through the rougher patches of the garden. The oversized weapon was out of place, but otherwise she seemed normal. The three youkai were uninteresting overall, one being rude, obviously without any taste for true beauty. One was a cat, and the other a mere child. The remaining girl though was very odd, wearing clothing she normally would have considered ridiculous at best, indecent at worst. Who dressed the poor child? 

Strangely though, it was this member of the group who had a little glass bottle on a chain around her neck, the end holding a very small, though glowing number of pulsing, crystal-like shards. She could feel their power calling her, and that alone changed the view she would carry of that girl. 

"You are from the village?" the flower asked Sango, peering upward at the taller woman. "You have not yet introduced yourself." 

"I'm Sango, and no, I'm not from any village around here." She sighed, then finally decided to kneel down, setting hiraikotsu behind her. It felt awkward, cinched in between the others and talking to such a small person. "You already met houshi-sama," she said dryly. "This is Kirara," she introduced, running a hand over the firecat's smooth head. Kirara was still standing, red eyes silently watchful on the chrysanthemum, though not alarmed, fur not on end. 

"I'm Kagome," Kagome added, glancing at the hanyou behind her, "and that's Inuyasha." She looked at Shippou, who was already speaking for himself. 

"These are my friends, like I said," he grinned, puffy tail flicking behind him and causing her to smile while he turned to the others and began telling them how he had stumbled across her, almost literally. "I followed the path," he pointed to a mass of darkness, "and heard the water, so I thought maybe I could look around here. I almost stepped on her, but I woke her up instead," he explained, then seemed to realize something. "You haven't told me your name yet." 

"Kigiku," she said, drawing back into the moonlight, letting herself be more visible in the water's glimmering reflections. She turned to them all, bowing slightly, the closed blossoms of other chrysanthemums around her bending in unison, a pale yellow court. "I am named Kigiku." 

"It is an honor to meet you, Kigiku-sama," Miroku bowed his head in return, earning another teasing smile from the flower. "You are the lady of this castle, are you not?" 

She began to preen again, more subtly this time, staying out of the shadows and letting the moonlight touch her, adding a slightly mysterious look to her many layered petals. "This place is mine," she told them, giving off her best royal air, head held high, proud. "The lord was having pictures drawn of my beauty, to be his crest and symbol, since he was growing in power. All the lands and villages surrounding belong to him, where I am honored. Yes. I am the lady of this castle." 

Inuyasha snorted, starting to get annoyed by the vanity of stupid flower everyone was so fascinated with all of a sudden. "Lands and villages surrounding? Feh. We've traveled almost a full day from the nearest one, because this weird castle is surrounded by a overgrown forest." 

Her eyes grew sharp, picking up on the insulting tone of his voice and replied snippily, "I rose the wall of thorns to protect this place. All things surrounding it are influenced by its magic. If a forest chose to grow out of these many seasons, then that is the concern of the forest itself." 

"But why did you raise the wall?" Kagome asked, shifting a bit where she knelt on the ground. "I assume to protect the people, but what happened to everyone in the first place? They're all...asleep..." she trailed softly, biting her lip and finally finding a more comfortable position as the tiny youkai flower focused her emerald eyes on the strange girl, watching hopefully with wide, pale blue eyes. 

Under that gaze, Kigiku took a deep breath, backing into the cozy wreath of other, though less vibrant and eternal, chrysanthemums that shared her flowerbed. Though this one was a girl, she was certainly paying attention, and seemed to appreciate her importance. Besides, she carried with her the most delicious aura of power Kigiku had felt in ages. Something like that, drunk through the earth at her roots, would be enough to strengthen her for an eternity...though still, so strange that such power sources would be carried in bottles, seemingly broken. After a moment, she sighed, giving in. Those bits of crystal were not for her. At least they were _people_...regardless of the lack of fine culture they may have. It had been so long since she'd had any _real _company. With their focus on her, she would absorb their attention and revel in it. 

"I'm not sure how many springs I have bloomed since my arrival here, though what you mention of the world outside the garden happened not long after." Settling into storytelling mode, she folded her hands neatly on the petals of her lap, modestly looking away, then up through her lashes, posing politely for her audience. "The daimyo had sent his soldiers far and wide, looking for a perfect crest for his emblem, to be emblazoned onto the armor of his men, and to be his standard. Many soldiers returned with empty hands, though others came bearing flowers, knowing the daimyo's fondness for us." She placed a hand to her cheek, mildly embarrassed, adding, "I was already quite well known for my beauty, and my new owner decided to bring me here, since at that time he was rather poor." 

The pleased features of her face hardened slightly, as though she were trying very hard not to show anger. Her hand fell away from her cheek, turning into a fist she clasped tightly with her other hand. The fact that the majority of her watchers were rapt kept her calm, and she glanced quickly at the rude one, who was doing the best he could to look bored with the story. Primly, she continued, "He offered me in exchange for a place to stay, hoping that I would be beautiful enough to catch the daimyo's eye. Of course, he agreed upon seeing me," she finished smugly, though her face fell a moment later. 

"But he was not allowed to stay as promised. As soon as I was planted here, my lord was escorted from the castle...youkai are not allowed to live amongst humans, however much they wish to do so." Her last words were very quiet, forlorn, and even those sitting close to her strained to listen. Kigiku's perfect posture was gone, replaced with rounded shoulders and a curled back, as she folded her arms over herself, dark hair falling as a curtain on either side of her face, as though to ward them away. Telling them the story made her uncomfortable, and she suddenly wished again for the solitude she had before Shippou arrived in her home. But still, it had been so _long....___

The others were quiet for a moment, until Kagome spoke again, prompting a response. "Your owner was a youkai?" 

A small smile formed on her lips at the memory. Such a kind lord, taking her away from the horrible place she had been before. She closed her eyes for a moment, bracing herself, then looked up at Kagome again. "He saved me from a horrible place," she told the other girl, the smiling straying back to her lips. "No one wanted to care for me anymore...even youkai must eat and drink. It is hard to fend for oneself when not in the wild. I did not want to leave...but he was still not so strong then. At first, there were many artists and poets, who wanted to copy out my image onto paper and canvas. I was expecting more the next day, but people stopped coming to see me that next morning. I could feel a change in the earth...weeds began to grow wild, and I feared whatever happened, there could be an attack...the daimyo was cruel," she exclaimed, then her head hung low again, "but the others didn't deserve to be hurt. So I lifted a veil of thorns to protect whatever was inside...through my plants, I realized they slept." 

When she stopped, head still bowed, Miroku cleared his throat. "You believe this youkai lord of yours cursed the castle? In retribution for..." he hesitated, then reconsidered what he'd been about to say. "For keeping you for himself?" 

She turned sad eyes on the houshi, leaning closer towards him with an understanding smile. "Of course. Why else would he try to harm the castle? It would be an insult to take something of his without it being a gift or something traded." Again, her smile turned sad, empty, lonely somehow. "I only wish he would forgive me, for being so willing to leave...I only wished to have a garden again...." 

"So you're waiting here for him to forgive you?" Sango tried not to choke, having already come to the conclusion of who this 'lord' of hers would have to be. Kigiku seemed vain, even pompous with her dramatically royal airs, but waiting for Naraku's 'forgiveness' was unlikely to ever happen. Judging by the continued silence of the others, they were following the story the way she was. She tried not to grind her teeth in disgust. Whatever Kigiku was, she didn't deserve what she was doing now. Silently hanging her head, as though ashamed. "There's nothing you can do, to wake them up? The people in the castle?" 

Kigiku peered upward, curious at the underlying tone of anger in the older girl's voice. "Oh, I'm far from strong enough to awaken all the people within the castle walls. I've been alone too long, without tending." Her eyes moved to Kagome, then to her neck, where the Shikon no Tama lay. "And I don't think you'd be willing to part with those lovely shards...what are they called?" 

"You're not getting your fucking hands on the Shikon no Tama!" Inuyasha snarled, stomping over as Kagome unobtrusively tucked the bottle back under her shirt. 

"Oh?" Kigiku asked archly, bringing her chin up. "And I suppose _you_ are the one who will use them, _hanyou?_" She let the last word drip with sarcasm as she busied herself with perfecting the layout of her petals. "You may be a youkai, but so am I. You are certainly _not_ like me, half blooded mongrel." 

"Who the _hell _do you think you are?" 

Before anyone could reply, she snapped, "I am lady Kigiku, fairest of them all, and you are nothing more than a mixed breed mutt. Get out of my garden before you taint it!" 

Thick vines swirled up at her sharp words, thorns visibly growing menacing in the deepening night, causing the group to scramble to their feet in alarm, weapons ready. The softness of the flowers faded away to reveal a wilder side of the garden, the thick weeds and sticker plants underfoot, sharp branches revealing themselves with a heavy clatter as the beautiful place became a small fortress, ready for battle. Through the heavy flora, a tunnel formed, leading away into darkness. 

"You may stay in the castle," she told them, a deep frown etching lines on her face as she told them lowly, "I will not turn away those who need a place to stay, whatever they may be. But I will not be insulted in my home. I asked a simple question, and received an insult in return. I wish to be alone now. Leave my garden. That is the way out." She pointed towards the black tunnel, and the many folds of her petals began to enclose her, covering the tiny body within them, drawing her back into the depths of the other flowers and camouflaging her into nonexistence.   
  
  


~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~ 

  


Kagome turned an icy glare on Inuyasha, who looked about ready to stomp on some flowers. "If you even try to crush her, Inuyasha, I'll say it until your back breaks!" 

"She's after the shards!" 

The icy glare turning into a furious shout. "You don't know that! She wanted to know what they were! If she's a youkai, she'd be picking up on it's presence! Besides, if she's been here for years, she probably doesn't even know what it is! It's not like-" 

"Kagome-chan!" Sango interrupted, putting an hand on Kagome's arm to keep her from exploding. "We'd better talk about this away from here." She cut her eyes at the flowerbed, knowing the flower could very well still be listening. Shouting could easily disturb their reluctant hostess further, and the intention was to make it out of the garden without getting killed by rampaging plants. "She said we could stay in the castle- let's go there." 

Taking a couple deep breaths, Kagome allowed Sango to steer her away from Inuyasha and another fight. Shippou had decided to settle himself safely on Miroku's shoulder, and Kirara was padding around the thick grass carefully, darting towards the tunnel, wanting to leave. Inuyasha sulked the way back, defensively folding his arms and scowling. He was right. He was sure of it. Why would she be asking about the tama if she was harmless? Besides, she called him a mongrel, the bitch! 'Fairest of them all' his ass...he could think of prettier girls than her, so what the hell was with her, calling him a mutt? And Kagome taking _her _side! Feh. Bitch. Now she was all pissed at him. This was going to be a long night....   
  
  


~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~ 

  
The second fairy tale in this fic is the story of Lady Yellow and Lady White. 'Kigiku' should translate to 'yellow chrysanthemum' in Japanese. (I opted for literal names...^.~) The story gives her many human qualities as far as physical appearance, even describing her with tiny feet- I opted for a kind of cross between a flower and a little person, since it is a bit ambiguous in the fairy tale at other points, and it works just a bit better in the fic. Flower from the waist down, human-ish from the waist up, and about the size of Thumbelina.   
I suppose you could say this fic takes place sometime after the actual fairy tale of Lady Yellow and Lady White was supposed to complete. A little more background about it will be forthcoming in further chapters, though not enough to spoil the fic, at least not til the end. I had a lot of fun writing her scenes...and her lines, ack, her lines! 'Mixed breed mutt' indeed. Where that came from I have no idea. kukuku. Though I leave it to you to decide what role she plays in the story. ^.~   
Until next chapter-   
~Queen   



	6. misconceptions on a chrysanthemum

For The Fairest   
  


_So hath your beaute fro your herte chased_   
_Pitee, that me availeth not to plaine._   
_Alas! that Nature hath in you compassed_   
_So grete beaute that no man may attaine_   
_To mercy, though he sterve for the paine.___

_(Your beauty has chased Pity from your heart,_   
_And it does me no good to complain._   
_Alas! Nature has bound in you_   
_Such great beauty that no man may attain Mercy,_   
_Though he hungers for the pain.)_   
_-Geoffrey Chaucer_ __

  
  


Chapter 6- _Misconceptions on a Chrysanthemum_   
  


Shippou found himself wishing he had some of that bagged stuff Kagome had brought a couple weeks ago. What was it called again? Oh yeah, popcorn. 

He was the current acting wedge between Miroku and Sango, the little kitsune barrier that allowed Sango some peace of mind when they sat down to watch the show. Finding their way out of Kigiku's garden was rather hazardous to a person's health, at least in Shippou's most expert opinion. Though the tunnel indeed led the way out, it grew narrow and twisting, roots rising to trip them and spidery branches reaching out to snatch at clothing, hair, and tail. He'd spent the last few minutes picking burrs out of his tail instead of munching on the buttery flavored popcorn stuff. Having reached the relative safety of their empty artists room, Kagome was finally allowed to explode. 

Sango, Miroku and Shippou were settled in a line against the wall, watching the two argue. Miroku and Sango with bored expressions of acceptance, Shippou with curiosity punctuated by winces of pain as he discovered another sticker in his bushy tail. Kirara was sitting beside Sango, her twin tails twitching as Kagome's voice pitched upward again. 

"We were finally finding out some information, Inuyasha! We knew Naraku was here, you were the one to go chasing his smell." Kagome stomped her foot in frustration, balling her fists. "Kigiku-sama is in the middle of this, and she could have told us more about why Naraku would be trying to target this place...." 

"She's fucked in the head!" came the crude response from an equally irate Inuyasha. "All she's doing is talking about how everyone thought she's so _beautiful,_" he sneered sarcastically. "She's a pain in the ass!" 

"Sometimes you have to put up with people who are pains because they can help you!" Kagome shouted back, raising a finger warningly as the two of them faced off. 

"Ha!" Inuyasha snapped triumphantly. "Then you _do_ agree with me! She _is_ a bitch!" 

Kagome smacked her forehead, holding it there for a moment before she looked up at him through narrow eyes, suddenly taking on a very scary aspect as her eyes seemed to gleam red in the candlelight. 

Shippou, Miroku and Sango backed away, Sango grabbing Kirara and pulling her back as well. 

"That...is not...the _point!_" Kagome began through clenched teeth, ending up with a shout. As she finally met his eyes, he had a second's warning before she finished with a resounding, "Osuwari!" 

Splat. 

A low growl began to emanate from the cracked floor, and Inuyasha lifted his head to see Kagome watching him imperiously from above, hands on hips. Lowly, he growled, "So I'm just supposed to accept her calling me a damn _mongrel?_" 

At that, Kagome hesitated, her anger beginning to dissipate. Kigiku had been at least as cruel to Inuyasha as Inuyasha had been disrespectful to her. Apparently he dealt better with being slammed into the ground than taking insults at his bloodlines. She sighed, then bent down as he began pulling himself up, offering a hand. "Gomen, Inuyasha...I just wanted to try to find out what happened here...." 

He examined her offered hand for a moment, a bit uncertainly. A small hand, with slim fingers slightly dirty from having been set against the soft ground of a flowerbed. She never offered to help him up after sitting him. But if he didn't take her hand, then he'd be rejecting a peace offer, and this would be endless if he did that. 

"Feh." 

She finished pulling him to his feet.   


"Kagome-sama does have a point though," Miroku interjected, taking the peaceful moment to switch directions in the conversation. "Kigiku-sama seems to be the only awake person here. She is the best chance if we wish to discover whatever Naraku's original plans were." 

Kagome tilted her head to the side to look at him, sitting on the floor. "You think the plans were changed?" 

"Portions of Kigiku-sama's story seem valid," a wry smile formed on his face, and he continued dryly, "despite her view of things. Though the fact she was presumably brought here by Naraku seems out of character for him, at least without a reason. Sleeping doesn't seem to be a very effective way of revenge, even if this was a weaker Naraku from many years ago." He lifted his right hand thoughtfully, watching the beads of the rosary clatter softly against each other. "Other than encountering my grandfather, we don't really know much about what he was doing in the fifty year gap between then and now." 

"So this was part of some old haywire plot to get himself stronger?" Kagome surmised, then blinked, realizing that during Miroku's explanation, she had failed to release Inuyasha's hands. Not that either of them were noticing the fact they were standing there casually, with their hands entwined. With the abrupt realization, she jerked her hands out of his, blushing slightly and edging away, talking rapidly to cover her embarrassment. "He's been trying to do that a lot lately and it would make sense if he tried to do that in the past the way he is now." 

Sango arched an eyebrow as Kagome busied herself with her sleeping bag, and then turned her eyes to see Inuyasha going into his usual 'feh' expression as he moved to the corner of the boy's side of the room, arms folded and face scowling, though in her opinion it was more his version of Kagome's chattering reaction. A moment later, he was obscured by the divider screen. While she listened to Miroku talk, she'd watched the naturalness of their pose. A wry smile formed on her face. "That seems likely, Kagome-chan. But what I'd like to know is why Kigiku-sama is still awake, if everyone and everything else is sleeping." 

"It's not exactly like Kagome's story..." Shippou told her, thinking of the fairy tale Kagome had told him earlier in the evening. "The princess isn't asleep, and she's not in the tower either." 

"Princess?" Miroku asked, perking up a bit at the mention, looking first at Shippou, then Kagome, awaiting an explanation while Sango gave him a dirty look. 

Kagome was sitting on her sleeping bag now, removing her knee high socks, shaking out any dirt that had ground their way into them while walking. "There's a western fairy tale that reminded me of this place. I was telling it to Shippou and Inuyasha-" 

"Feh!" 

She rolled her eyes and ignored the hanyou, now unseen from their side of the room, except for a jumpy shadow cast by a candle, the light filtered by a paper hurricane. Vague moonlight was pressing through the lightly stenciled outer wall, revealing a pattern of graceful reeds. "I was telling it to Shippou _and_ Inuyasha," she continued firmly, "before we found Kigiku-sama. A princess fell into an enchanted sleep, in the highest tower of her castle. It was surrounded by roses, to keep people out. All the flowers and the wall of roses reminded me of that. Though the princess in the fairy tale wasn't a youkai flower living in the garden, and I don't think she had any dealings with the one who cursed her to sleep, the way Kigiku-sama seems to have known Naraku." 

"She must have some kind of power if Naraku thought he could manipulate her," Sango added thoughtfully, deciding to get up. The movement seemed to signal a breaking of the small group council, and Miroku got to his feet as well, first moving towards his own futon, then hesitated, going to the pile of half stacked drawings in the corner of the room and picking up a sheaf of them before getting ready to turn in. Seeing the houshi was safely on the other side of the separating screens, she turned down her futon and sat on it while Shippou made a little nest for himself next to where Kagome was situating herself. 

"Youkai plants don't usually attack humans unless they're provoked somehow," Sango rubbed her eyes a bit blearily as she felt Kirara's weight suddenly pounce on her feet, then move upward, looking for a comfortable spot to settle in for the night as Sango lay down. The little firecat decided the crook of Sango's arm was best this evening, and her mistress patted her on the head lightly as twin tails covered her nose, signaling a wish to not be disturbed. "Kigiku-sama seems to just want to be paid compliments. I don't understand why she would want to hurt anyone if they just fed her enough praise for her looks." 

"So maybe someone didn't give her enough compliments." Inuyasha's caustic tone floated through the room. "That'd probably piss her off." 

"Inuyasha," Kagome sighed, getting exasperated. "Just let it go. She probably doesn't want to talk to you anymore, either." She hesitated as she pulled the sleeping bag up to her chest, tucking Shippou in as she went. The kitsune already looked sleepy, eyelids drooping as he yawned. "If she wants to talk to any of us anymore. She did kick us out." 

"Feh." 

"_Oyasumi, _Inuyasha," stressing the word and hoping he got the idea that it was late, she wanted to sleep, and not to argue anymore. When no reply came other than the shuffling of papers, she assumed he had, and lay her head down to rest.   
  


The sound of paper rustling filled the room as the candles burned out. Steady, Kagome eventually began to wonder what Miroku was looking for. The light sounds were white noise, filtering out the usual creakings and groanings of the aging, neglected castle and its slumbering occupants. 

In the quiet, Kagome could feel the little bottle containing her precious few shards of the Shikon no Tama. Cool, it pressed against her skin with an unusual heaviness. Careful not to disrupt Shippou, who was snoozing away, she withdrew it from the inside of her collar, seeing the splinter shaped shards, and heard them ring against each other and the glass as she tilted the bottle to the side to look. They felt the same as always with her, pure and clear as crystal within their fragile container. Such small things could create such large amounts of trouble. In her slim hand, they pulsed lightly, as though reacting to her worry over them, their feeble light stronger than she remembered, and reflective in her eyes. 

They pulsed, as though warring with themselves. 

And she could not tell why.   
  
  
  
  


~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~   
  
  


la...I know, I know, the chapters of this fic are so sporadically short....forgive me? ::gives puppy dog eyes:: Just a little discussion this chapter, and then things will begin to roll again, promise. ^.~   
Til next time.   
~Queen   


  


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scriptoriumfanfics/   



	7. a rising sun at daybreak

For the Fairest__

_I had a kingly house at my command;_   
_grievous the evil choice that disgraced me, grievous._   
_The chastisement of crime that has withered me:_   
_Alas! My hand is not clean._   
_-11th century Irish Anon._   
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Chapter 7- _A Rising Sun at Daybreak_   
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Her eyes were closed, but her lashes fluttered lightly against her cheeks, the lids trying to keep in the night and fend off the strip of daylight that had fallen directly across them. After a moment, Sango opened her eyes with a squint, trying to shield her dark adapted eyes from the morning's brightness, allowed into their quiet room by an open shoji door. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and began to stretch, disrupting Kirara's sleep and edging her off the futon with a halfhearted growling noise. As Sango stood, the cat resumed her curled up position, and Sango tucked her feet up, quickly checking her surroundings. It seemed like it was still relatively safe. Though Kigiku-sama had said they could stay the night, she had a vague worry that the plants still wrapped around the roofbeams of their room may not agree with their temperamental hostess' kindness. 

Kagome was still sleeping, a hand under her cheek, while Shippou was sprawled out, mouth open and arms flung wide. Standing, she peered around the room's partition, not really expecting to see Inuyasha there. As she assumed, the hanyou was already up and moving from his corner. Miroku, too, was gone, and as she absently patted down her sleep mussed hair, she heard the faint shuffling of papers again, the same sound she fell asleep to. 

Through the crack in the shoji, where the light had flooded in to wake her, she saw an arm stretch past, setting something down, and then retreat beyond her vision. Careful to step quietly, she slipped across the varnished floor and slid the door open a bit more, finding Miroku surrounded by what seemed to be all of the drawings they found yesterday. A cascade of white sheaves were spilling off his lap, puddling on the verandah around him, and slipping down the steps just outside their door. His shakujou was resting against the railing, rings clinking lightly in the morning breeze. 

It was slightly humid, though not enough to actually rain. Dew was scattered across the grasses of the yard, facets glittering in the early morning light, as the rosy dawn began to crest the tops of the trees. A spiderweb she hadn't noticed the night before was gleaming in silvery tones above her head, shivering in the cool air. 

At first he didn't seem to notice her presence, but when she bent down to pick up some of the sketches he was examining, the disruption of his disorganized pile startled him from concentrating on the two pictures he was holding at that particular moment. "Ohayo," Sango greeted him, then looked at the two sketches she had selected. "Looking through the drawings?" 

He nodded, a thoughtful frown on his face as he brushed a few of the papers aside, motioning for her to join him in sitting. "Ohayo, and yes. Something was bothering me last night, and I think I've finally found out what." 

Miroku was holding out one of the sketches out for her, and her curiosity piqued, she knelt down beside him and accepted it, scanning the picture. This particular one was covered in several lightly stenciled sketches, though they surrounded a small but intricate portrait of a chrysanthemum, a tiny body inserted into the cup of the bloom, eyes downcast and sorrowful. Long hair draped over her arms, and her hands were delicately poised at her sides, a tiny, perfect picture of unnatural loveliness. 

"It's Kigiku-sama," Sango stated, not really seeing why this is unusual. Kigiku had told them many artists came to draw her, so if these pictures were of her, that wasn't surprising. When she said that, a half smile formed on Miroku's face, and he pointed at the flower, tapping it with a finger. 

"Look again." 

A consternated frown formed on her lips as she looked a second time, also scanning over the other pictures, this time paying more attention to detail. All were ink sketches, lightly brushed by the same talented hand. In black and white, Kigiku's hair was only shaded, the glossy white of it dominating her hair. A bit bewildered, she asked, "What am I looking for? Kigiku-sama's hair is white, but it looks..." she trailed off, and didn't see the satisfied smile on Miroku's face form. 

She was frowning thoughtfully, the curve of her dark hair curving smoothly around the contour of her white cheek, the puzzlement of her expression half hidden. It was a beautiful morning, for all he had spent the night dozing, only to have his head snap up again, causing wakefulness. It had been tempting to try to wake her to help him search, though since he didn't know what to look for himself, it seemed pointless, and it was better for her to rest, since she wasn't restless anyway. He had watched the sunrise, and saw the tiny watery prisms form across the wild lawn from the morning dew. Now, he watched her eyes roam across the page and knew she would find what had taken him so long to realize. The night was over now, and though he knew it was better to let her sleep, he regretted not having her there.   
  
Running a finger over the picture, she moved from the shading of the youkai plant's hair to the bloom her body was settled in. Kigiku had many pale yellow petals surrounding her, enfolding her little body within them. Rather than the heavy petticoat of long, curled layers, there lay drawn a simpler array, the petals drawn up around her carefully, some of them hidden in the perspective of the drawing, but there were distinctly fewer petals, shorter and less fanciful.   
  
"Houshi-sama, this isn't Kigiku-sama?" she half asked, a bit unsure. Whoever had drawn the picture must have at least _seen_ a youkai flower such as Kigiku in order to draw such an unusual creature. If this wasn't Kigiku, then who was it? "The blossom is different." 

Taking the picture back from Sango, he scanned it again, nodding at her discovery. "It took me half the night to realize it, and it was right in front of my face. I kept doing what you did, looking at her rather than the bloom." 

"So it's not Kigiku-sama. Who is it of?" 

He frowned and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I have no idea. Either the artist drew one of the resident women in the flower for some reason which I do not know, or there is another lady chrysanthemum out there with what I would guess to be..." he quickly tallied up the number of visible petals, "...sixteen petals. I doubt the first option, since it is the body is what is so different. Whoever this is does seem to resemble Kigiku-sama." 

"Which would mean she didn't tell us everything," Sango surmised, flipping through more of the pictures. Some of them were sketches other than the sixteen petaled chrysanthemum, though now that she was paying attention to the strain of plant, she noticed that the majority of the pictures matched the one including the unidentified thumb sized body. "Why though?" 

Miroku shook his head with a frown. "I don't know. I decided I'm going to go back into the garden and talk to her." 

Her head snapped up from where she was engrossed in the drawings, eyes widening before they drew down into a suspicious glare. Sango set aside the papers and folded her arms. "Oh? Kigiku-sama kicked us out last night. What makes you think she'll let you back in to talk?" 

A vague smile formed on Miroku's face, and he shrugged noncommittally. "I think it was mostly Inuyasha she disliked. Besides, our gracious hostess didn't seem to mind the rest of us." 

"You mean she didn't seem to mind _you_," Sango told him sourly, a frown deepening on her features. Kigiku had taken one look at the human, male, non-pottymouthed member of the group, and promptly changed her entire attitude to accommodate. Miroku of course just fed into the whole thing, flirting with her and stroking her already oversized ego. So what if she was pretty? She was a youkai, and a tiny one at that. What could be possibly be thinking, anyway? 

She blinked in surprise when Miroku pulled her hands out from where she had folded them, enclosed them in his, and told her with the utmost seriousness: "Don't worry, Sango. I'll always return to you." 

A bright red blush instantly rose to her cheeks as her eyes rounded, desperately trying to come up with some sharp retort to that. Unfortunately, the statement was disconcerting, and all she could lamely splutter was, "You...don't sound so ridiculous!" She snatched her hands out of his, shifting nervously and trying to remember to breathe normally. 

His eyebrows lifted, and he tilted his head to the side for a moment, considering her reaction and feeling oddly pleased by it. Replacing a smile with a modest shrug, he stood and picked up his shakujou, ringing with the motion. "I'm going to see if I can get through to her, and maybe find out something about our mysterious model," he told her as he bent down and picked up the tiny portrait, which had slid off of Sango's lap when he took her hands. She was still a bright shade of red, lips pursed as she tried to fight off a mixture of half formed anger and embarrassment. What made him say things like that? 

"I won't be long," he added after a moment, and Sango finally sighed, giving up for the time being as he moved towards the overgrown section of the backyard. She supposed he'd just try to beat his way through the shrubbery with the shakujou, though it was still going to be a difficult job of it. If she got hiraikotsu, she probably could hack her way through them the way she had last night. Despite that, the concept of watching the sukebe working on flirting fouled up her helpful mood. He did have a point...if that was not Kigiku in the picture, who was it? 

Normally it wouldn't bother her too much- it was just a picture, after all- but the nagging feeling in the back of her mind was prodding at her, reminding her that Kigiku was the only one who could talk or was awake here...hundreds of sleeping people was not a normal event, and finding the reason why was something she wanted to know. It reminded her too much of home.... 

Shaking her head slightly, she watched as he tossed up droplets of dew, his form disappearing in the pale morning mist.   
  
  


It didn't take long for Miroku to decide Kigiku really did not want anyone returning. He'd been half hoping that she would relent overnight, and the botany would have settled itself down to a more normal level of jungleness. Flattery, he hoped, would get him everywhere. Carefully, Miroku tucked the drawing of the mysterious youkai plant into his robes, and braced himself against the creeping vines heading his way, seemingly on automatic attack mode once he passed the initial line of tree foliage. 

"Kigiku-sama!" he found himself calling out, fending off the sharp rose thorns with his shakujou, hoping she would hear him through the muffling flora. "I was hoping to see you this morning, if you wouldn't mind the company!" 

A few panicked moments later, the vines began to recede, and Miroku breathed a little more easily as a path began to form, thick fronds curtaining apart for him to pass, leading him around a new route to the flower beds, the blooms fragrant with the heavy morning dew. Today, he took a slightly more cautious look around the garden as he emerged into the better tended area, unobtrusively sweeping his eyes across the other strains of flower, searching for something pale, a field of white against the green and many colored blossoms, a handful of pale pink sakura drifting idly through the air and twirling. Shrubbery and rose bushes obscured the hill opposite of Kigiku's planted place, cloaking most of the area from view, though it was subtly different from how he remembered it to look the night before. Wisteria had wound its way through the shrubbery, and poppies bloomed freshly underfoot, peppering the pathway. Kigiku, in control of all the plant life, had been opening and closing various trails through the underbrush, so presumably everything inside the garden was shifting almost constantly. 

Rustling interrupted his quick search, and from the edge of the pond, one of the yellow chrysanthemums rose above the others, Kigiku's little body unfolding from within the cup of petals, her hands cupping a glimmering drop of water. She breathed a deep breath, as though inhaling the sweet morning air, and he watched the droplet of dew fade from her hands, though more rested on her petals. Then, with a charming smile, she opened her eyes and greeted him. "Ohayo, houshi-sama. You almost interrupted my morning bath!" 

"Ah, forgive me, Kigiku-sama," Miroku replied with a polite bow, before he moved to kneel closer to the pale yellow flower. The morning mist was evaporating off the pond behind her, coiling around her court of other chrysanthemums, creating a silvery haze. "I would hate to disrupt you." 

Kigiku's hand flew to her cheek, affecting bashfulness as she looked up at him through her lashes. "No, you aren't disrupting me at all, houshi-sama. I'm glad you returned, it is so nice to have intelligent company again," she finished dreamily, beaming up at him. 

"Your image was haunting me most of the night, Kigiku-sama, and I did wish to see you again before we had to leave," he told her honestly, though without much elaboration. Her image had been bothering him, though not for the reason she seemed to be accepting it as, and he was pleased to see her blush deepen and her shy away. He doubted that she was very embarrassed, since she sought most of the compliments herself, but it was, after all, an overly polite and ladylike mannerism. Miroku was also glad Sango was not there at the moment, considering she probably would be severely whacking him in the head soon. "And seeing you now, fresh in the morning, it was truly worth the wait of the night." He could see Sango's face now, utterly livid and hands reaching for hiraikotsu.... 

Kigiku's emerald eyes were starry. "Ah, houshi-sama, you must be a true aesthetic, even if you don't write poetry." 

"All the haiku in the land would only begin to do your beauty justice." And the boomerang comes crashing down on the back of his head! In reality, Miroku tried not to flinch.   
  
However, the flower was unaware of his mental wonderings, and was devouring the praise greedily, a pleasantly demure look on her lovely features. "You are too kind, houshi-sama," she preened. 

"And not only are you beautiful, but powerful as well," he continued as sweetly as he could, gesturing broadly at the thick, thorny vines surrounding most of the sequestered portion of the garden. "It must be amazingly difficult for one as delicate as yourself to control so many plants...it is a true gift." 

Kigiku's flush faded, and her head tilted slightly to the side as she considered him with a thoughtful expression, somehow different from the other looks he had seen her wear this morning and last night. The vanity seemed to fade away for a moment as she seemed to be considering carefully her answer. For a moment, beneath all the posturing and careful flirtation, he saw someone slightly different, still a miniature, though a delicate little creature without acting. She seemed sad somehow, and as she looked away from him, her hands were carelessly resting against the curls of her petaled body. "I am a youkai," she began, voice soft and slightly lilting, eyes not meeting his. "It is not a gift. They must listen to me, for I am stronger than they. That is all." 

Miroku leaned back slightly, uncertainly. That was the first time Kigiku had spoken so candidly, particularly without making anything out of her control of the garden and its surrounding areas. Perhaps this would be a better time to ask her about the strange, unidentified drawing they found, if she was being unusually candid. On the other hand, she may simply get angry that he would ask about another youkai chrysanthemum, particularly one who had so many drawings made of her. 

He hung his head, nodding sadly in agreement. "It must be difficult for you, living here all alone for so long. It is terrible that there is no way to awaken the people of the castle." 

Faced away, her eyes slid carefully to see him kneeling before her, an honest looking expression of pity on his face. "It is a curse caused by a youkai," she sighed after a moment, shaking her head. "Sleeping spells...they are cast quickly, a poisonous youki in the air. There is not much to be done for such a thing." She placed a hand to her lips, nails pressing sharply into her skin as her brows drew together in thought. After a moment, Kigiku shook her head as though to clear it, and turned back to Miroku, a small smile returning again as she said cheerily, "But someday, I'm sure the curse will be lifted, when my lord returns for me." The smile faded a bit with uncertainty. "It will just have to wait until then. I suppose I'm supposed to stay alone and unloved." 

"But Kigiku-sama, your loveliness will always be remembered," he assured her solemnly. "My companions and I stayed in one of the empty rooms of the donjon, feeling it inappropriate to move any of the castle's citizens from where they slept. It seemed like we stumbled into the rooms of some of the artists," he set aside his shakujou and fumbled for the rolled up portrait in his robe. "I found many lovely drawings of you. I must say, this one is unique though, since the others seemed to not include your beautiful face." A moment later, be produced the scroll, unfurling it and holding it open for her to see. 

A tiny frown flicked across her mouth for a moment, then vanished as she shook her head and sighed. "Ara, houshi-sama...we look much alike, but that is not me. See the petals? My sister has only sixteen. She is terribly plain." 

With a shocked expression, Miroku flipped the paper over to examine it again, running a finger over the image. "You're right! Only sixteen, and they are shorter than yours, Kigiku-sama. Forgive my inattention to the details...I fear there are reasons I am not an artist," he sighed dramatically. 

Kigiku smiled for a moment, letting out a light laugh. "You don't need to apologize so profusely, houshi-sama...she is plain, I suppose, but there are those who like pure simplicity...." Kigiku reached for the edge of the paper, turning it back over so she could see the image painted there. Then she arched an eyebrow up at Miroku. "You brought this here to ask me why my sister is gone, did you not? It is too convenient you should just happen to have this drawing with you. What is it you wish to know?" 

A bit defeated, Miroku took the paper back from her, since it seemed like his efforts at subterfuge had just been exposed. If she saw through him, then it may be better to keep things a bit more honest. "Another youkai chrysanthemum, with pictures drawn of her...though it is you that we found last night. I couldn't help but wonder why this one...your sister, you say? I can't help but wonder why she, too, is not awake." 

Kigiku folded her arms across her chest, a deep frown marring her features. "She was also a member of the court here, subject to the daimyo. She was brought here first, which is why I'm sure you found many pictures of her within the donjon and the daimyo's quarters." Kigiku shrugged, then began to arrange her petals, scooping up one of the reflective droplets of water from her bloom and began to gaze into its crystalline surface, her image reflected but distorted. "She sleeps as they do." Her eyes flicked up towards Miroku's, then she tried to peer around him. Following her look, he turned to see a darker thicket of rose thorns. "Beyond the hedge, there. We were good friends, once...until she told the daimyo that my lord was a youkai. I can't forgive her...I closed her away behind the roses." Then, abruptly, Kigiku added, "She is still there." 

It was an odd twist to the story Kigiku had already told them. Why would this other chrysanthemum have told the daimyo the young Naraku was a youkai, if she herself was one as well? Why would it matter to her, unless she sensed something sinister about Naraku? Very possible, but Kigiku seemed to have no problems with him. He glanced at Kigiku, who was picking up another bead of dew, adding it to the first and breathing lightly upon it. Slowly, incredibly slowly, a thread of mist was coiling away from her hands, drifting out into the air and hovering around her. 

"Houshi-sama, I am sorry, but I must ask you to go. It was nice speaking with you, but I wish to be alone now..." she turned a weak smile on him as the vapor curled outward on a faint wind. "You were very kind to me, and I truly do appreciate that. Please, leave now." 

The words were a clear dismissal, and so he stood, quickly picking up his shakujou again and backing away. Rather than the menacing rustling revealing her anger the previous night, the garden had become deathly still, leaves and vines stiffly unmoving, though the path he had walked to arrive at the reflective pond remained open. The pond itself continued to ripple in the wind, lapping at the reedy banks silently. 

"As you wish, Kigiku-sama," he agreed, backing away a step and bowing politely. "I believe we will be leaving this morning, as well." 

She was no longer paying attention to him, settling back into the folds her petals, sinking into the surrounding blossoms with her. After a moment, she disappeared, trails of mist still trickling across the grass. He folded the sketch of Kigiku's 'sister,' tucking it again into his robes, and hurried back down the path, in case Kigiku changed her mind about allowing him safe conduct from her garden. Her words had filled in many discrepancies in the story, though the simple fact that it was Naraku who brought her here kept him on edge. Perhaps it would be best to retreat for a time....   
  
  
  


~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~ 

  
  


I finally got to a bit of Mirosan waff...^.~ Love them. Anyway, I kind of had fun using Miroku's flirtation skills against Kigiku...heh.   
Til next time!   
~Queen 


	8. arrival of the morning wind

For The Fairest 

  
  
  
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_...it seemed as though he was looking into their inmost nature,_   
_making observations in regard to their creative essence,_   
_and discovering why one leaf grew in this shape and another in that,_   
_and wherefore such and such flowers differed among themselves in hue and perfume...._   
_-Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rappaccini's Daughter_ __

  
  
  
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_Chapter 8- Arrival of the Morning Wind_   
  


Precariously balancing an armload of freshly picked plums, Shippou heard Miroku's approach before he was able to turn around and see him, the fruits filling up his short arms and forcing him to carry the unwieldy load under his chin. "Ah! Miroku! Help me, won't you?" the slightly overwhelmed little kitsune asked as the houshi approached, bending down and plucking some out of Shippou's wobbly grip, scooping them into his free hand. 

"Part of breakfast?" Miroku asked, guessing that Shippou was heading back to the open shoji door, leading to their commandeered room. He saw the two girls moving around inside, blocking the view of whatever it was they had found. 

"Yeah, we checked along the outside of the turret, and there's some fruit trees there too. We got some oranges and stuff too, and Kagome says she has other things in her bag...they just walk too fast...." he complained, short legs scrambling to catch up again, as Miroku made it to the steps. 

Kirara was already munching on a scrap of meat, while Kagome handed out now-familiar looking jars, containing iced tea or green tea, identifiable by the colorful labels. Dumping the remainder of the plums on the swept area of the floor, Shippou sighed, picking up one of the oranges and smacking his lips as he began to tear off the peel, releasing the sharp citrus scent into the air, mingling with the richer fragrance of the plums, Sango snapping the last of the twigs and leaves from the fruit. 

"Miroku-sama?" Kagome offered up one of the iced teas, and as Miroku settled down in the uneven circle, he accepted it, untwisting the top. 

"Arigatou." 

Swallowing a bite of her plum, Sango wiped some of the juice from her chin and asked, "So, houshi-sama, did you find anything out from Kigiku-sama?" 

"Did you tell them what we found?" 

When she shook her head, he set aside his drink, Miroku withdrawing the picture again, unrolling it and holding it up for Kagome and Shippou to see. "This was one of the pictures Shippou found yesterday, in the upstairs with the daimyo and the artists." 

"The one with the girl in the flower?" Shippou queried, blinking upward and trying to get a good look of the demure little picture. 

"Note that it is not Kigiku-sama." 

"Not?" Kagome asked, leaning forward to see better, then taking the picture away from Miroku to study it. "Why wouldn't it be, though? She was the only youkai in the garden. If it's not her, then who is it?" 

Frowning into the iced tea, Miroku replied, "Kigiku-sama didn't give a name, but she referred to her as a sister. A sister also hidden behind some of the shrubbery that Kigiku-sama has control over in her garden." 

Sango arched an eyebrow skeptically as Kagome passed the sketch back to Miroku. "And she's asleep too? That sounds a little strange." 

"I think so too, though she said it was because this sister is the one who told the daimyo that Naraku was a youkai." He hesitated, sipping the drink thoughtfully then quickly downing it. "That would explain how he knew, and it fits with the rest of Kigiku-sama's story." 

"Something about it all just doesn't feel right," Kagome murmured, absently fingering the shards of the Shikon no Tama on their chain. "There really isn't a bad aura around this place, but all the people make me nervous, and Inuyasha picked up on Naraku's scent, even if it was old...I doubt he'd just put a place to sleep because they kicked him out." 

With a loud swallow, Shippou polished off his orange, and reached for a plum, looking at Sango and adding, "You know, if Kigiku got mad at her sister person, if they even are related because they're different kinds of chrysanthemum, it'd be kind of like Kohaku, wouldn't it?"   
  
Sango turned white, fingers clenching around the plastic bottle she held. 

Thinking he'd made some kind of mistake, Shippou began to stutter an apology, but was interrupted by Kagome gently telling him, "Yes, but Naraku didn't have the Shikon no Tama to try to corrupt then. Turning them against each other wouldn't do him much good." 

"Even so," Miroku bit out, "Naraku doesn't like it when people 'bother' him. I wouldn't put it past him just for spite." The kazaana was upheld slightly, for emphasis on his point. "My grandfather tried to fight Naraku, and this was the result. We know he's been around for the last fifty years...who knows what he plotted during that time, before the Shikon no Tama returned? This could just be a failed plan of his." 

"He's just messing with more people's lives, the bastard." Sango slammed her green tea onto the floor with a jarring crack. Liquid began to dribble out of the break, pooling around the glass. "There has to be a way to wake everyone up. Did she say anything about how he did all this?" 

"That it's like a poisonous youki in the air," he sighed heavily, beginning to lose his appetite over the conversation. "And that not much can be done about it. I'd assume that if Naraku were to die, the curse would be lifted...of course, that's just assuming it works the same way as the kazaana." 

"Youki can be purified," Kagome offered, still unsure of how youki could cause people to fall asleep. Wasn't it supposed to be a part of the youkai it belonged to? That concept nagged at the back of her mind as she yawned, jaw cracking. Was she missing something obvious? Ugh, too early in the morning. How did one purify youki? Her arrows did that, though she couldn't just keep shooting arrows everywhere. Inuyasha's Kaze no Kizu cut youki, but it didn't exactly dispel it...besides, she didn't want to accidentally have him slice apart the whole donjon, people inside and all. "Can you establish some kind of barrier, Miroku-sama?" 

"Large enough for the entire castle complex and the village outside of it?" Miroku shook his head. "I'd need help, and a lot more ofuda than I have with me." 

"I could help, and we could try to get Kaede-baa-chan," Kagome continued, trying to think her way through it, to see if it would work. It still seemed like a very large task, even for three people. There was always a way to break a spell...it was just a matter of finding it. She almost regretted that there was no princess sleeping in the donjon tower- it would make life a lot easier at this point. 

"I think we're talking in circles," Sango sighed, mopping up the little mess she'd made with her tea, patting the wooden floorboards with one of the napkins Kagome had bundled into her bag, heavily crinkled from being stuffed somewhere in the bottom. "At least we know who is in the picture...and if it is some kind of poisonous youki, then there has to be some way to purify it. It doesn't sound very elegant, but maybe we should withdraw for awhile and talk to Kaede-sama. She may know another way. I really don't want to leave these people like this." 

A few nods signaled agreement with her, and Sango stood up, balling up the soaked napkin and stuffing it inside the now empty jar of green tea. "Inuyasha's still roaming around the castle, isn't he? I'll try and find him. Kirara?" 

The twin tailed firecat looked up from where she had been quietly listening to the humans talk, having finished her own breakfast several minutes ago. The taiji-ya was reaching quickly for hiraikotsu, a precautionary measure, allowing her to take comfort in the fact she was armed in a place that seemed safe, though was still creepy enough to warrant caution. At Sango's command, she leapt up, quickly following her out into the hall connecting their turret to the main tower.   
  


Picking her way through the concentric rings of the sleeping castle, Sango lightly stepped over or around the explosion of creeping botanical life, avoiding the chance of disturbing the people who lay sleeping on the soft beds of moss and long grass. They remained unchanged from how she remembered them, not even shifting or tossing in their sleep, but rather still and statuelike, as though cast in stone painted in brilliant colors, living and vibrant, about to come alive. Even in its eeriness, there was a kind of impossible beauty to it, something wild and magical, though inherently wrong, not unlike looking at a beautifully rendered painting of angry youkai attacking. The swirls and expressions, the bright colors...all could be the work of a master, and yet to look at such a work could bring chills if it were in the evening, under firelight, allowing the demons to dance in the flames. 

It seemed that way through the entire complex, beautiful and yet deeply wrong. This little world was too still, without life, despite all the curling, sleeping, creeping roses. Sango rested her hand against one of the wooden rails of the bridge she stood on, watching the tiny form of Kirara weave in and out of the prickly vines more easily than she could. She had decided to follow the firecat most of the way, hoping Kirara would be able to pick out the direction Inuyasha had taken, though if Inuyasha himself was complaining of difficulty trailing scents in the air, Kirara was unlikely to have better luck than he. Still, Sango wanted to move, to get out of the room they had decided to spend the night in. Falling asleep with a draping chandelier of vines overhead reminded her of where they were, and gave her dreams in which snakes tried to wrap themselves around her arms and neck. She shuddered, then moved on, eventually finding her way back to the plaza they had emerged into the day before, after Inuyasha used the Kaze no Kizu to break their way through the towering veil of thorns. 

"Inuyasha!" Sango called, lifting a hand to her mouth and shifting hiraikotsu for comfort. Maybe it had been redundant to bring the bulky weapon with, but if something did go wrong, she felt safer with it. On the grasses and moss laying across the courtyard, the same bodies lay spread, still and silent, from the old woman sitting beneath the overhang of her verandah, to the boys playing ball by the pond. 

She sighed, looking around and hoping the hanyou's ears weren't having as many problems as his nose had been. "Inuyasha, are you here? Inuyasha!" 

Kirara suddenly pricked her ears up, and Sango followed her gaze to see Inuyasha moving along the rooftops of the homes across the plaza from them, an annoyed look on his face as he came closer, eventually turning his head and leaping down and across the plaza to meet her. 

"I take it you didn't find whatever it was you went out for this morning?" she asked him, the disgruntled expression growing more irritable as she spoke. 

He folded his arms and grunted. "Feh. The stench is still here, but all these damned flowers are stinking up the place! I swear I smelled something this morning, but I keep ending up against the stupid roses," he snorted, as though to clear his sense of smell from the overwhelming fragrance. After a moment, he looked at Sango, realizing she probably came looking for him for a reason. "Did one of you find something?" 

"Houshi-sama went back and talked to Kigiku-sama this morning," she began, interrupted for a moment by an aggravated, 'feh!' "Apparently there is another youkai chrysanthemum somewhere in the garden, who was the one to tip off the daimyo that Naraku was a youkai. She also told him that apparently the sleeping spell is some way of manipulating poisonous youki." 

"Sounds like one of Naraku's miasmas." 

Sango nodded in agreement. "And miasma can be purified, but I don't think either houshi-sama or Kagome-chan are up to trying to purify an area this large. I think we more or less decided to go talk to Kaede-sama, to see if there's anything we can do on a larger scale." 

His frown just deepened, and Inuyasha flattened his ears back against his head in annoyance. "The day's up. If you all want to go just go and then come back, then fine." 

Sango arched an eyebrow at him, wondering what that was all about. Before she could question it, Kirara's hiss began to sound not far away, and she looked to the cat to see her standing not far from the alleyway they originally entered through, her hackles raised as she backed away from the darkness between the buildings. "Kirara, what is...?" 

The half formed question was answered a moment later when the rose wall suddenly burst to life, the tightly closed blood red roses opening as the black thorns began to thicken, sharpening and raising as the grassy plaza beneath their feet began to rustle sharply in a rising wind, darkening under the new growth of the sharp vines, growing taller and pulling in on themselves, narrowing the space of clear blue sky beyond them. 

Small patches of flowers lining the pathways, the pond, the bridge...all began to rustle and thicken, spreading out rapidly and growing, shooting up broad, flat leaves, woven tightly with thin, sharp ones. 

The land beneath Inuyasha and Sango's feet bucked as they tried to keep steady footing, Kirara transforming in a ball of flames to keep herself from being swallowed up in the sudden growth. Sango began to struggle her way over to the cat, swinging hiraikotsu to cut through the rising grasses. 

Swiping his claws through the nearest clump of foliage, Inuyasha sliced apart the flora growing closest to him, now up past his waist. "What the hell is going on?!" 

"I don't know! Let's get back to the-" 

"Fuujin no Mai." 

From where a thick bush of roses was swirling upward, black thorns stretching longer and sharper, a sudden rush of sharp winds sliced through the air, sending Inuyasha dodging for cover and forcing Sango to heft hiraikotsu before her and Kirara as a shield against the blades. 

A lithe form was slowly moving forward from the corner of one of the houses, a red and white fan half hiding a thin smile, as scarlet eyes watched them bemusedly. 

"It's been awhile, Inuyasha," Kagura greeted them, closing her fan a bit more to reveal her face. Flowers still continued to grow, around them, thickening, though the wild shifting of the ground had leveled, stabilizing. Now, though, it was impossible to see the places where the people fell, sleeping soundly through the uproar of Kagura's arrival. "You look awfully surprised to see me." 

A growl escaped Inuyasha's throat as he cracked his knuckles, the sound muted by the rustling of the plants. "Heh, I thought Naraku hadn't been around this place in awhile. Too bad, I guess I get to beat the shit out of you instead." 

Kagura's eyebrows arched as she spread her fan open again. "Oh? You'll spend time fighting with me, when you should be worried about your friends up in the castle? I'm honored." 

Inuyasha blanched, quickly looking back towards the now hidden direction of the path to the donjon, and to the turret where Kagome likely waited. And if Kagura was trying to bait him, then she probably was in danger. "What the hell are you doing to Kagome?" 

"Me? I'm not doing anything. I'm here for you to try to beat the shit out of, remember?" she shot back, raising her fan again. "Now, about that...Fuujin no Mai!"   
  
  
  


~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~   
  
  


Believe it or not, some ends are going to start tying themselves together very soon. ^_^   
And it's quite important that Sango walked out that door instead of Miroku...originally I was going to have him go, but...::cackles:: Have another chapter or two and you'll see.   
Also, there is a Lady White in the story of _Lady Yellow and Lady White_, which half of this fic is based on. I'll give you a more detailed backstory to it at the end of the fic, since I'm assuming you, my dear readers, are not as familiar with that one as _The Sleeping Beauty_. ^.~v   
Til next time.   
~Queen   



	9. like a poisoned apple

For The Fairest   
  


_I'll say it loud here by your grave_   
_those angels can't_   
_ever take my place_   
_somewhere where the orchids grow_   
_I can't find those church bells...._   
_Don't judge me so hard, little girl._   
_-Tori Amos, Playboy Mommy_ __

  
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_Chapter 9- Like A Poisoned Apple_   
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Sweeping up the last of the breakfast mess, Kagome wondered exactly where they should dispose of the garbage. She, Miroku and Shippou were now cleaning up, and it always felt a little wrong to her, just leaving the junk out in the open. At home, the nice, efficient trash can, garbage truck, and city dump took care of things, ushering the waste out of sight and out of mind. In the sengoku jidai, there were no such amenities, and just leaving it someplace left her feeling guilty, adding to an already existing feeling of discomfiture at the current situation. 

The pervading feeling of _wrongness _was growing stronger, though she couldn't quite place what it was bothering her. 

"Kagome?" Shippou piped up, head tilted to the side quizzically, watching the schoolgirl reach for the small lump beneath the fabric of her shirt, a worried expression crossing her features as she gingerly fingered the bottle containing the shards of the Shikon no Tama. "What's wrong?" 

If he has asked five minutes ago, she would have dismissed it as her imagination. But as she drew out the little bottle, the slivers of crystal were glowing, shimmering in the early morning light dustily glancing through the open shoji door. At Shippou's question, the clinking of bottles stilled, as Miroku hesitated, lifting his head to hear her response. 

"I don't know. The shards..." she shook her head to clear it, setting aside the bag of empty jars she had collected to concentrate. It felt strange, rather than dormant, sleeping, they radiated warmly through the glass container, glittering. "Something is going on. I don't like this." The frown already existing on her face deepened, and she looked out through the open door. "It feels like...I don't know, like the battle that's supposed to be going on inside the tama...like it just took a turn for the worse." She shivered, heading for the door, hearing Miroku's footfalls behind her, and then ringing as he picked up his staff. 

"I take it you want to find the source of the problem?" Miroku asked as he followed Kagome down the steps, uncertainly heading towards the still hedge that obscured the garden. 

A determined look settled on her features, and she nodded once. "Everything here has had something to do with that garden. Now Kigiku claims to have a sister, and the stillness of this place...it's not so silent anymore. Something's going on, and whatever it is has to be coming out of there." 

Glancing at the unruly plants along the rim of the garden's entrance, he noticed the tunnel-like opening he had passed through earlier still open, leading downward towards the depths. With a clatter, he heard Kagome go back up the steps, disappear, then reappear, this time with her bow and arrows in hand, clearly not wanting to go anywhere unarmed, particularly without the whole group there. 

Before rejoining Miroku, Kagome stopped and looked down at the now nervous looking little kitsune. "Shippou-chan, would you mind staying here? When Sango-chan and Inuyasha come back, tell them where we went, okay?" 

Shippou gulped a bit- being left alone made him nervous, but he wasn't sure if going into that now pretty darn creepy looking garden was any easier. Kigiku had been nice to him, but if Kagome said something bad was coming out of there, then maybe he'd be safer here...though the decision was made for him, since his uncertain silence let Kagome turn and head out again, leaving him standing behind. Belatedly, he called back, "All right! I'll keep watch too!" 

The two older members of the group paused, turning, and Kagome waved that she had heard him, quickly giving him a reassuring smile before they headed to the edge of the backyard, and then disappeared into the undergrowth.   
  
  
  


The foliage of the path wove intricate patterns overhead, the deep green leaves of the morning replaced with the unseasonal explosions of autumn color, the short span of time between Miroku's earlier visit and the second passing through now. No vines or thorns rose up to block their path, though the colorful pressing of leaves above allowed in few shafts of sunlight, acting rather like stained glass, dim but glowing with gloomy translucence. The sides and ceiling of the path pressed in heavily, the thinner branches of trees still in the quiet mist that was slipping around old, gnarled roots. 

The pond that rested behind Kigiku's flowerbed was the source of the wispy mist, steam rising lightly and flowing over the ground, swishing aside as two sets of feet wandered through it, finally reaching the many colored clearing. Here, though, the entire area was shot through with paleness; the scattering of delicate cherry trees were in their autumn forms, blossoms trickling away on the wind and dancing to the ground, creating a blanket as white as snow. Though here and there, small, blood red blooms were disturbing the surface, the open blossoms of poppies. 

Again visible from her yellow blossom amid the chrysanthemums, Kigiku was holding a droplet of dew in her hands, the water filling her palms, since they were so small. Approaching, Kagome watched as it dissolved, mingling into the mist with a light swirl. 

"What are you doing?" 

The words broke the silence, and emerald eyes flicked up the the speaker, standing before her with a bow in her hands and a frown on her face. 

"Just exercising my charms," Kigiku replied with a wave of her hand, before folding it neatly upon the folds of her petals. After a moment, she peered around Kagome and smiled at Miroku. "My image appearing before you again, houshi-sama? Do you like the changes I made to my garden this morning? The white is a nice contrast to the leaves, ne?" 

She referred to the pale, pinkish white sakura that cloaked the ground like snow. 

Miroku's eyes narrowed more at her tone. There was a note of sarcasm in her voice, of anger. "What are you doing, Kigiku-sama?" he echoed, standing beside Kagome and glaring downward. 

She folded her hands and kept her eyes lowered, speaking quietly. 

_ "Once upon a time there was a daimyo, who was searching through all the land for a crest for his shield. He sent men to many corners of the land, seeking a perfect symbol to be painted onto his banners and his armor. One evening, a traveler arrived, bearing a chrysanthemum in his hand, offering it as trade for a night's sleep. But the daimyo would not accept the payment, since he was told the traveler was a youkai, and not to be trusted."___

Her voice was smooth and even, soft as silk and entrancing, hypnotic. There was no sound to signal the slow yet steady closure of the path they walked to reach the garden. So as Kigiku told her tale, there was no reason for either human to look up and see that they were completely being enclosed by a thick weave of sharp thorns. 

Kagome wavered once on her feet, blinking hard at the little flower below her. A creeping numbness was starting in her fingers, making them clumsy, and she clutched a bit more at her bow as she tried to clear her head, suddenly feeling very thick. She tried to move, but found her body was not complying, reacting as though she were underwater, slowly and with blurriness. 

_"The traveler again requested a room in the castle, and again was rejected..."_

Kagome's bow slid from her fingers as Miroku leaned heavily against his shakujou, sinking down to the ground and kicking up drifts of petals, the faintly heart shaped blossoms scattering. 

_ "...but the chrysanthemum was not ordinary, and became angry. At the cruelty of the daimyo, she cast her own spell upon the place, cursing them all to die."___

The thickness in Kagome's mind grew heavy, weighting her down, her knees bending then collapsing as she tried to keep her eyes open. She could still see the colorful light that pressed through the webbing of the tree branches, though she realized she was now staring up at them, trying to force herself in the realm of consciousness. Soft sakura fluttered onto her cheeks, their gentle feeling contrasting with the strange buzzing noise that was filling her ears. Busy images darted across her vision, which grew more shadowy as she fought the encroaching tide of darkness. 

_ "Sadly, though, the chrysanthemum's one time friend betrayed her again, and changed the curse. The people were cursed, not with death, but only sleep, as they would stay until the spell was broken."_   


Kigiku ended her story, looking at the two collapsed figures before her. The houshi had fallen on his side, fist still clutching his shakujou. Slowly, his face relaxed as he sunk more deeply into dreams. 

The Kagome one lay on her back, eyes closed lightly, lashes brushing her cheeks as she attempted to curl a hand around her neck, fingers just covering the pulsing slivers of the Shikon no Tama. Closing her eyes for a moment, Kigiku sighed and nodded, turning emerald eyes up to the sky. The brightness of the day had darkened as she spoke; what light had penetrated the canopy she created was gone, and now Naraku's saimyoushou flicked from one place to another in her garden, swarming above the misty vapors of her poison. 

She drew back the curtain of the leaves, and air rushed into the garden, two new occupants joining the remainder of the sleeping castle. The insects began to descend, heading for her and for and the other female in the clearing, for the little glowing bottle and the contents within. 

The pale yellow chrysanthemum looked at the veiled area beyond her, where another flower slept, exhausted from countering her spells. For a moment, she felt a twinge of what could have been guilt, but then again, she was the one who had been thrown away. She shrugged as the first saimyoushou surrounded her, lifting her upward. Soon, she would be cared for again, and not so alone. 

She had her revenge on the humans. It was too difficult to purify all the hatred of one who has been wronged, after all. What could counter such hate?   
  


Wedged between two thick branches, burs now sticking out of his hair and tail, Shippou tried not to beat himself in the head while trying to figure out what to do. 

He had enough time to nervously sit down on the verandah of the artists room they had used the night before, fidgeting as he waited for Inuyasha and Sango to return. They'd know better than he would what to do, and it'd be a lot safer to go into that jungle with them, rather than try to follow Kagome and Miroku on his own. Either option- being left alone, or going along for the ride- seemed equally bad. Now that they had disappeared, he just wanted some company.   
  
It was when he heard the arrival of the saimyoushou in the sky that he started to panic. The cloud of buzzing insects was accompanied by the all too familiar dark sky of Naraku's youkai, though the sinuous bodies remained high in the clouds while the poison insects descended, heading for the thick garden. At the same time, the arching passage into the depths began to close. 

Skittering on little feet back and forth, he ran two steps towards the closing floral gap, then another two back towards the route Inuyasha and Sango had headed through. 

It was when the youkai above finally broke through the clouds when he decided. The youkai were headed outward towards the castle grounds and the surrounding town. Even if he got to Inuyasha right away, the hanyou would be too busy killing off Naraku's horde of minions to listen. He bolted for the closing path, darting through as the last thorns closed. 

Small size worked to his advantage this time, and though he continuously snagged himself on the snatching brambles, he wormed his way through until he got stuck at his current vantage point, a nice clear view of Kagome falling over a length away from Miroku, apparently dead. But then, a lot of people looked dead around here, right? They were asleep, right? Right? 

He scrambled and pulled himself free of the cage of wicker, tumbling down under a shrub, still out of sight. Saimyoushou were surrounding Kigiku, and the fact she seemed completely unbothered by this scared him even further. 

Then he noticed that the saimyoushou were also hovering above Kagome, and the small glowing object that was half covered by her slim fingers. 

Shippou tried not to scream in panic, frantically pulling at his hair while they settled on her, wings fluttering rapidly as they tried to pull it out of her fingers. He couldn't fight off an entire horde of saimyoushou! One or two maybe if he was lucky, but there were dozens of the things flying around! 

With a faint crackling sound, Kigiku was pulled free from the ground, and the flowers around her wilted and blackened as her roots trailed, swinging in the air as she was lifted.   
  
He couldn't do anything about Kagome or Miroku, but he couldn't let those saimyoushou carry off the shards of the Shikon no Tama! 

"Ahhh, I wish I were bigger!" he wailed as he frantically grabbed a leaf out of his jacket and prayed to any nearby kami that this insane trick would work. He didn't even know how to get out of this place now that the path was closed up. "Split!" 

Suddenly, a dozen little Shippou-s popped into the air, bouncing around among the saimyoushou. 

Now from high above, there was a thin, reedy shriek or surprise from Kigiku as she watched the little figures appear, bounding between the insects and trying to attack them. It only took a moment for the illusions to pop out of existence, but it was long enough for her to see that whichever one of them was real had somehow snatched the bottle of shikon shards out of Kagome's still hand.   


Shivering, Shippou scooted himself backward, deeper into the thicket on the far side of Kigiku's clearing, his tail tucked up under him while he clutched the glass bottle, hoping that he wasn't making too much noise. Small, he'd been able to worm his way though the bugs, and with enough imitations of himself trying to bite or throw things at the saimyoushou, he'd bolted for the first hiding place that looked good. Of course, after about a moment of hiding, he froze, realizing that he had done something very stupid. 

He'd gone straight into the _plants._

Shippou grit his teeth and tried not to scream again. He was in the middle of Kigiku's flower garden, which she controlled with her powers. Keeping himself from screaming seemed like a waste of thought, since he cowered on the ground, expecting to get plucked up by the tail any moment by some snaky vines, or worse, stabbed to death by a bouquet of razor sharp roses. It would be the end of Shippou, trying valiantly to protect what he could, stabbed to death by a bunch of flowers. He was such a wimp! Inuyasha would laugh at him, and Kagome would be so disappointed! All he could do was just crouch there, face into the dirt, tail full of burs, shivering and waiting...and waiting.... 

After a moment, he blinked, and looked up a little bit. Through the heavy weave of shrub branches, he could see little, but his youkai hearing was still perfectly functional. A buzzing sound was still swarming in the air, the sound of Naraku's poison wasps flitting around. There were rustling noises in the foliage, but nothing near to him. A little bit of curiosity replaced the terror of being caught, and he edged backward just a bit more, cautiously making sure there was still a very thick arch of branches above him. Sliding backward, he tumbled out of the bush, and pressed himself flat to the ground again, feeling his own pounding heartbeat, since he still clutched the bottle against his chest. 

No stabbing flowers. No vines. No death. 

Yes, he was definitely still alive and unfound. That didn't make any sense. Kigiku was a lot stronger than he was, and even with his childish kitsune powers, there was no way she couldn't find him smack in the middle of her own territory. What was taking so long? The buzzing was fading out, as though the search was moving on. But with all the plants, shouldn't she know where he was in an instant? 

Closing both hands around the bottle, he gripped it tightly and bit his lip, trying to figure out why he was still breathing. Had Inuyasha and Sango showed up? No, he heard buzzing but not the sound anyone fighting, swearing, shouting, or crying. The saimyoushou weren't even trying to come through the same bush he had. The horrible idea that there was something even worse in here gripped him; teeth chattering in fear, he turned around, expecting some frightening specter to reach out and grab him. 

In the shadows of the darkness, a ghostly image did appear, but not a terrifying one. Half hidden amid dark green leaves, a small white flower stood dimly glowing against the darkness, short, chiaroscuro petals drawn up against her, the bloom of her body bowed, arms askew in slumber and shoulders hidden by locks of long white hair, draped by a dew laced spider's web. A tiny white creature, silent, still, breathless, a sharp contrast to the vibrancy that pulsed around Kigiku. 

That morning- had it only been a few minutes ago? That morning, eating breakfast, Miroku had told them a story, that Kigiku had a sister, hidden behind some shrubbery in her garden. Hidden away, would the saimyoushou look for him with this chrysanthemum here, sleeping? No, Kigiku would be vigilant about this place, since Miroku said she kept this sister hidden. Why then would she not know he was here? 

The buzzing faded into nothingness, and he realized that Kigiku had not returned. Being carried away by the saimyoushou, she was no longer planted in the earth, her roots removed from her home. Would that, then, cut her connection to the land? It seemed that way. 

He remembered another story too, one that Kagome told him last night, a story from a far away place that was Kagome's home. The story of a girl who pricked her finger on something called a spinning wheel, since the wicked fairy had been jealous of those who had attended the baby girl's party. The story of a girl who had fallen asleep for a hundred years, only to be woken by the kiss of a prince. 

Looking at the translucent skin of the sleeping chrysanthemum, Shippou decided he had found the castle's princess.   
  
  
  
  


~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~   
  
  
  


Have I utterly confused you?   
The 'story' Kigiku tells is, in part, her side of the story in the tale of _Lady Yellow and Lady White_, with the added backstory to this fic thrown in. And with a nice dose of the introduction to _Beauty and the Beast_ mixed into that. Now add cinnamon and vanilla for flavor, stir well. ;P The offering of the flower would be inspired from that particular fairy tale. I've tried using many references throughout the fic, from the Japanese _Lady Yellow and Lady White_, to describing Kigiku as 'thumb-sized'..._Thumbelina_, anyone? I hope you're having fun picking out the references.   
Though the tale Kigiku tells is somewhat incomplete, (and one-sided!) it is more truthful than what she said before...which was mostly half truths and lies. I had a lot of fun writing Kigiku as a character- ie, I like her- but she is rather twisted around, for varied reasons. I stuck to the perspective of the Inu-gumi in this fic- for the most part, I think it works, though there is one scene I wish I could have done, to explain the switch in Kigiku's manner. A scene where Kagura contacts her...but then, the switch wouldn't have been a surprise, you would have seen it coming a mile off, words words words. I hope this works okay.   
Now, you may be going, "But Miroku is a guy. He's not supposed to fall asleep!!!" To this I say: My darned unromantic and delightfully ironic feminist side began screaming at me not to fall into the 'Evil Pit of Male Tradition' and have the Boys recsue the Girls. Since Kagome's pretty well stuck in the traditional 'princess' role, Sango got to be more postmodernist. Which means Miroku gets to go sleepy-bye instead. bwahahahaha!!!! ::cough::   
Ahem. Hope you like the twist. (No, I am not a sociopathic militant feminist. Swear. ^.^ ehe)   
Til next chapter.   
~Queen 


	10. of the beholder

For The Fairest   
  
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_I don't feel any pain_   
_A little fall of rain_   
_Can hardly hurt me now._   
_You're here, that's all I need to know._   
_And you will keep me safe._   
_And you will keep me close._   
_And rain will make the flowers grow._   
_-Eponine, LesMiserables, Act 2_ __

  
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_Chapter 10- Of The Beholder_   
__

Two allies facing one enemy. The logical course of action would be to separate and surround, in an attempt to overwhelm the opponent's ability to retaliate a blitz of attacks on both sides, unable to see incoming strikes from one of the two directions. Though Inuyasha moved to one side just to be moving towards Kagura, Sango understood the concept a little better, and split parallel to Inuyasha, Kirara transforming while Sango quickly wished she were only in her taiji-ya outfit, rather than the more restricting kimono. 

Kagura also seemed completely aware of the strategy being used against her, raising her fan in preparation and firing off two large blades of wind, one in each direction, turning as she did so to keep Inuyasha in her vision, half crouched in case Sango had been fortunate enough to miss the blast. 

She had. Inuyasha rolled forward as the wind blade struck the house behind him, but Sango was forced to pull up short, Kirara rearing backward as the blast impacted the wall of rose vines to her left, the slicing causing them to reform again, coiling and hissing as they reached out to lasso Sango around the wrist. The sudden resistance to movement jerked her backward, the plants spinning up her arm. She twisted to the side, attempting to get hiraikotsu into position to cut herself free, while seeing Kirara caught up in the same problem, a heavy noose of vines around her neck, others joining the first around the firecat's paws as she struggled to back away. The more she struggled, the tighter the vines wound. 

Pulling, Sango watched as Inuyasha faced off with Kagura, poised and readying for a blast with the Kaze no Kizu, seeking out the place where their two youki met and clashed. In the air there was static, crackling and making the skin on her neck rise as she fought against the trap, and let her eyes sweep across what had been the courtyard of the donjon's village. 

The courtyard of the village where all the people slept...where Inuyasha and Kagura faced off in the center. 

"Inuyasha! If you hit her, the Kaze no Kizu will hit the people under the brush! Don't use the Kaze no Kizu! Don't-" her words were cut off with a surprised scream, as another vine snaked its way across her shoulders and over her chest, yanking her back. Flailing, she braced herself against the treacherous ground, locking her legs into place with her knees bent, in case of another pull from the vines. She readjusted her grip on hiraikotsu, and in one burst of energy and movement, pivoted, swinging the weapon around and using all her energy to pull in her left arm, avoiding the sharp sweep that sliced apart the binds. Another twirl, and she had beaten them back. A third sweep and Kirara was freed. The cat shook off the last of the vines, snarling and edging away, clawing any that dared come near. 

Turning back to see how Inuyasha was faring, Sango saw him attempting to get in closer, having heard her warning. He was swinging Tetsusaiga at Kagura, who was easily out of the blade's reach. Though as she looked across the fresh layer of grasses, ripples moved. It could have been effects of Kagura's wind, but these moved against the detachment's magic, half unseen by staying low to the ground. Controlled. The attack wasn't just because the Fuujin no Mai had hit the wall of roses. They were being controlled. And they were aiding Kagura. 

"Hiraikotsu!" 

The word rang out in the air, synonymous with a burst from the ground, thorns rearing back between Kagura and Inuyasha, a cage around the hanyou, crashing downward as he looked up, having been intent on his opponent. Around the boomerang, the wind screamed as it was sliced in half, looping between the two antagonists, hacking the streaming vines off at the top as it returned to Sango, who caught it, sprinting forward to rejoin the battle as Inuyasha burst out of the collapsing botany. 

The moment the plants erupted from the ground, Kagura began to back away. She saw Sango's charge, sidestepping quickly as hiraikotsu made a powerful downsweep, taking advantage of her momentary state of being out of balance. Then she leapt back again as Sango tried a combination sideswipe, pressing the advantage while Kirara bounded to the other side, keeping her from getting away in another direction. Inuyasha was landing from his leap from the plants, Tetsusaiga drawn and with a very pissed off expression set on his features. Nearly being trapped was not something that set well with him. With both the hanyou and the taiji-ya in front of her, and the bakeneko behind her, Kagura decided that it was time she got on with her work, rather than just holding them here for awhile. It was about time anyway, if she judged things correctly. 

She tore the white feather from her hair, floating out of reach within a moment, her voice trailing behind as she soared towards the castle, "I've got other business to take care of. Beat the shit out of them, instead." 

"Them?" Sango repeated, spinning around in unison with Inuyasha as they noticed the dark clouds above them again, now swirling with the low level youkai Naraku used as his general minions. 

Stepping forward, Inuyasha readied Tetsusaiga. "Feh. This time they're not on the ground!" 

As the horde descended, Sango kept herself and Kirara behind Inuyasha as he swung the sword, easily finding the swirls of youki the clouds radiated, slicing cleanly through the youkai and disintegrating them in the single sweep.   
  


Inuyasha lowered Tetsusaiga as any remains from the youkai fell to the ground, landing in splattery clumps as the grass began to shrivel underfoot, and the wall of thorns began to recede, the waves of blackish green flora curling as though dried out, crumpling under their own weight. 

"Shit, what the hell is going on _now?_" Inuyasha growled as he began leaping towards the falling plants, Sango grabbing onto Kirara and leaping sideways onto her back in order to keep up. Kagura had _said _she had other business....   


  
They ran. Back through the concentric rings of the castle, leaping and flying over the rooftops and battlements, past the wooden bridge and the staggered gateways and courtyards full of sleeping people, now covered by the decaying flora, shadowy figures beneath mossy blankets. The plants were dying, collapsing, falling in on themselves as though there had been a great long drought, and they lacked water. All the scarlet roses had bloomed, closed buds exploding and setting the petals free to drift. They flickered over their dark stems and the green grass, as though painted blood splattered against a frame. 

The garden itself was an empty thing, the branches of its trees spidery in appearance, having lost their leaves, now cascading to the ground like fallen flames, bright against the dark webbing above. The black fingers of the woods stenciled out abstract shapes against their colorful backdrop, though the evergreens that clustered together at the garden's edges had browned, needles curling below patchy branches. 

Leaping high off the top of the donjon, Inuyasha launched himself towards the center of the dying place, using the little lake in its center as a mark. Kigiku was planted at the pond; there he was sure he would find whatever it was he was looking for. In the sky above, the clouds had begun to open again, the youkai vanishing. Still, in the distance, there was a faint swirl of darkness, and the scent of the saimyoushou and Kagura still remaining on the wind. 

The branches, sucked dry of sap, snapped easily under his weight as he broke through them, slashing out with his claws to clear more room as he descended to the ground, accompanied by the soft thud of Kirara landing just after him. 

Shoving aside the last of the bushes between himself and Kigiku's pond, Inuyasha froze at the sight that greeted him. A moment later, Sango's footsteps stilled and there was a sharp intake of breath from the taiji-ya. 

What was once the densest area was now growing stark, the hardy bushes along the rise of a hill the only remaining greenness; all else was white and red, poppies piercing a thick cloak of white sakura petals, which fell upon the two sleepers in the clearing. 

The silence snapped. 

_ "Kagome!"___

_ "Houshi-sama!"___

  
The soft petals had fallen onto Kagome's cheeks, tangled into her hair, and streamed across her clothes. Her bow and arrows lay discarded at her side haphazardly, one hand lying out towards them, the other curled up beside her cheek, the paleness of her skin matching the snowy sakura, rather than the poppy that was slowly losing its petals by her shoulder. 

Asleep. As asleep as any other member of the castle's household, her skin still faintly warm to the touch, though as delicate as bisque, made finer still in contrast to the darkness of her hair, falling in an aureole around her face. A few strands had strayed across her cheek, and he brushed them back awkwardly, uncertainly looking at the sleeping face of Kagome. He felt cold suddenly, wanting to curl in on himself and become very small, to hide somewhere far away. 

"Kagome?" he asked a little tentatively as he tried to gently shake her awake. "Oy...oy, Kagome?" 

Her lashes fluttered lightly against her cheeks, and for a moment there was a wisp of hope in his heart. But it died away as quickly as a curl of smoke, because she sighed and her head turned as though she drew deeper into a dream, flying from the wakefulness of the day. A feeling that was akin to panic began to rise in him, and more frantically he demanded, "Kagome? Dammit, Kagome! Wake up. Wake up!" 

A low voice replied to him, "It's the spell, Inuyasha...it's the same spell...the same as everyone else...." though her words were slightly halting, Sango brushed away the white petals that had found their way onto Miroku's robes as she answered him, not looking up from her task. The same spell, the same endless sleep. 

A sad sort of smile played on her lips as she brushed the houshi's bangs away from his forehead. She'd seen him sleep many times in their travels, of course. But to come so close now seemed unfair. Always, always caution. This was a bitter gift, being able to simply sit beside him without fear or nervousness, but also knowing that there was no reason to be afraid or nervous. This time, he would not wake up. This time, he could not try to touch her. "Kigiku-sama is also gone...look." 

Slowly, slowly, Inuyasha turned away from Kagome's face to look for the flowerbed Kigiku had rested in. Now, it was black and charred and empty, the chrysanthemums little more than sticks jutting from the ground. 

Raw fury warred with an expanding sense of sorrow. Part of him wanted to run after Kigiku by tracing Kagura's scent- that had to be the other business Kagura had in mind. Getting Kigiku away from here. A trick, all of it. Another fucking trick by Naraku. He wanted to chase her down, and rip her apart, shred her pale yellow petals and scatter them to the winds. The other part though, the part held him still, kneeling at the side of a sleeping girl from the future, whose eyes were closed and he did not know how to open them. 

Quietly, he cupped her chin in his rough hand. 

"Sango..." he began roughly, trying to concentrate on one thing at a time. Kagome was not dead. She was asleep. Just _asleep_. People wake up after they've been asleep. They always wake up. If the spell worked like a miasma, it could be purified. How to purify Kigiku's? There had to be a way to wake her up, he just had to find it, obviously. Then he'd do it, and everything would be back to normal. "You said earlier something about Kaede-babaa maybe knowing something-" 

He was interrupted when the shrubbery across from them began to rustle, part of the last bit of greenery in the clearing. Inuyasha was half on his feet and with a hand on Tetsusaiga when out of the bushes, Shippou tumbled, squeaking as he landed. 

His eyes lit up when he saw Inuyasha and Sango there, and then instantly fell as he remembered what had happened, edging closer to Kagome and peering downward. 

"I saved the shards?" Shippou offered after a moment, weakly handing them towards Inuyasha, who blinked in surprise to hear that come from the kitsune. Looking down, he realized that the thin chain that Kagome wore the bottle on had snapped, and was lying half hidden in the hair behind her shoulder. "There were a lot of saimyoushou, and there were youkai coming down from the sky, and I couldn't do anything but I got these, and I found that other flower, and she's sleeping too...." he babbled lamely, hoping that talking would help somehow. 

"Arigatou, Shippou-chan," Sango called softly from where she sat, Kirara nudging her in the back in an attempt at comfort. The taiji-ya placed a hand on the firecat's muzzle and petted her lightly. 

Biting his lip, Shippou looked between them. The expressions looked like it was a funeral, but they weren't dead. They were just asleep, like the princess he found on the other side of the bushes, hidden away where nobody could see her, where she was hard to find, same as like the story Kagome told him and Inuyasha last night. People had woken up in that story...all of them. 

"You could always just kiss her," Shippou told Inuyasha, who under more normal circumstances would probably have either whacked the kid in the head or thrown him somewhere far away. This time though, he just blanched and spluttered. 

Sango was shaking her head and looking at the kitsune, trying to figure out why he'd suggest such a thing. "Shippou-chan, I don't think that's...appropriate...ah...." 

"Why not?" he asked. "It worked in the story." 

"The story?" 

"Shippou, this isn't some goddamed fairy tale!" Inuyasha shouted, then seemed to deflate, sagging backward and sitting down, frustrated. Stupid story. 

Then, quietly, Sango repeated, "The story Kagome told you last night?" 

Edging back a bit from Inuyasha, Shippou looked at Sango, still clutching the bottle of shards in his hands. "Yeah. The princess got her hand cut by a wheel and she fell asleep in the castle. But a prince came and kissed her and she woke up. It worked in the story." 

A small smile formed on Sango's face for a moment, and she looked down at the sleeping figure at her side. That sounded so ridiculously simplistic. A kiss to break a spell? How easy that would be. Close your eyes, lower your head, and press your lips against another's. Simple. 

"S...Sango?" Inuyasha managed to stutter as the girl began to lower her head slowly, a very odd expression on her face. "What the...you're not taking that story seriously?" 

Sango closed her eyes and chuckled for a moment. "If there's anything that'll wake the sukebe up, it would be that, actually," she replied lightly, a warmth beginning to spread from her heart to her cheeks, turning them a deepening shade of pink. She felt silly, leaning in like this in the broad open, right in front of Inuyasha and Shippou. But it was her business, not theirs. If it worked then it worked, and then houshi-sama, at least, would be back, and that would be one less thing to worry about, wouldn't it? If he still slept, then he wouldn't know anyway...Inuyasha seemed too astounded, and he wasn't the type to say anything. Though Shippou would end up telling Kagome...well, Kagome was asleep as well. 

She could feel his breathing. Resting a hand lightly on his chest, she leaned forward and lightly touched his lips with hers, closing her eyes and discovering that Miroku still tasted a bit like the iced tea he had for breakfast, his mouth just slightly sweet. 

If a kiss could break a spell, what was it about a kiss that held such power?   


Inuyasha and Shippou were both staring at the display, though after a moment, tried very hard not to stare. Satisfied with his work, Shippou turned on Inuyasha with a determined look. Folding his arms, he declared, very accurately, "Miroku's not a princess." 

The fact that Kagome wasn't either didn't really occur to him, because he was debating frantically whether or not he could actually do what Sango was doing at the moment. It wouldn't work. It couldn't work. This was stupid. This was a stupid story Kagome told Shippou. 

A stupid story that sounded an awful lot like this one. 

It was just a kiss, right? 

Didn't really mean anything, it was just to wake her up, maybe. Possibly. Yeah. 

Just a kiss. 

That was all. 

A kiss. 

She tasted like plums. Rich and yet light, sweet and fresh and warm. He could feel her breath against his, mingling as he found his eyes lowering. For a moment, there was no outside world, just a tiny little place where he was sitting and kissing Kagome.   
  


A big silly grin was on Shippou's face. It would work, he was sure of it. He may just be a kid, but he _believed_ in the fairy tale, and wanted it to work. The princess wasn't in the tower, she was veiled away in a garden, caught in a precarious balance with another princess, who was jealous and hateful. Though there was no prince to kiss that princess, then maybe whatever fairies spun these tales would accept a substitute or two. 

He kept believing that, as a wind began to stir through the bare branches above, snatching at the free petals of sakura, and sending them twirling into the air. In his hands, the shards of the Shikon no Tama began to pulse, though it took him a moment to realize it. They were glowing, as though beating, brightening and then dimming, only to brighten again, gleaming brighter. 

"Oh...Inuyasha! Inuyasha look!" Shippou shouted, brandishing the bottle, only to be ignored. Shippou didn't care, and turned to see if Sango was paying attention. She was drawing away, opening her eyes and waiting, half expectantly watching Miroku's face. 

He remained still, eyes closed, and she sighed and leaned back, wishing she could regret it. Baka sukebe. So much for killing Naraku, so much for ending the curse, so much for...everything.   
  


Inuyasha pressed his forehead against Kagome's for a moment, wanting the contact and knowing that she had not stirred during the kiss, hadn't moved, or returned it. Passively, she slept, and he caressed her cheek again. 

Then the most bizarrely familiar sound reached his ears. 

_"Sukebe houshi!"_

_ Smack._

He turned in time to see a very puzzled looking Miroku get slapped hard enough to turn him over, wide eyed and dizzy looking. This was made worse when Sango grabbed him, turned him back, and continuously kept checking his very much open set of eyes. None of this made much sense to Miroku at the moment, because his face hurt the way it did when Sango slapped him, but she was looking very happy at the moment. Bewildered, he wondered what he did now and how long she be mad at him for it. 

"Inu...yasha?" 

That was a more familiar sound, and one much more welcome. "Kagome?" 

She flinched, trying to pry her eyes open, working at it as though forcing herself through something thick and heavy. A shadowy outline greeted her, and slowly focused into a face, looking both relieved and embarrassed, but generally happy. "You're awake!" 

"Awake?" she repeated dully. How early was it? Ugh, more shard hunting...or was it school? "Can I sleep more?" 

"Hell no! Kagome, wake up!" 

"Okay, okay, you don't need to...." she trailed off, looking around her as Inuyasha took her hands and pulled her into a sitting position. At first a little vague, she looked at him, then around her. Memory flooded back at the sight that met her eyes, though it was not the barren, desolate place that she remembered as Kigiku last spoke. Now, it was fresh and poignant and wonderful, the blossoms on the cherry trees unfurling their petals before her eyes, renewed as though it were spring. The spindly branches that seemed so withered and old were filling with sweet blossoms, and the air was becoming laden with their fragrance. 

"Inuyasha...what's going on?" 

Looking around himself, he began to see what Kagome saw, springtime replacing the dead of winter in the garden. 

"Everything's waking up! The kissing worked!" Shippou announced cheerily, and perfectly loud enough for everyone to hear. 

"Kissing?" echoed Kagome, looking at Inuyasha, who sniffed, scowled and folded his arms, a vain attempt to conceal some redness in his face. Kagome touched her lips with her fingertips, then looked at him again. 

"Well...it...it worked in that stupid story!" he finally sputtered, which only made Kagome smile in response.   


Sango, also, was looking away, fixated on the ground, trying very hard not to fidget or look anywhere else, because she could feel Miroku's eyes pressing on her. After a moment, she heard him say, "Sango, arigatou." 

"Ah...you're...welcome?" 

She finally managed to glance up to see him with a small smile on his face, and she struggled to keep away a blush. "At...at least it worked," she managed, trying to change the topic before she got any more embarrassed. "I don't understand why something like that would break a sleeping spell though, especially one as powerful as this." 

"That is because a kiss is a simple display of hate's opposition," came a small, sad voice, soft enough that it was barely heard. 

Four sets of eyes swiveled around seeking the speaker, whose voice seemed to come from all directions. Shippou, though, looked delighted, and ran back to the bushes, very glad that this was working the way he'd hoped. If not, he'd never live it down. Pushing back the hedge, he was able to see a vague white figure through the remaining branches, no longer bent. As he pushed them aside, the brambles began to curtain away, shrinking in upon themselves and spreading greenly across the ground at his feet. 

Unfolding within was a bright, sixteen petaled white chrysanthemum, her petals short and not so curled as Kigiku's, her bloom simple and unadorned. White also was her hair, veiled by a dew laced spider's web, her arms folded across her chest as though hugging herself, her face downcast. 

"This place is filled with hate and jealousy, which can sometimes come from twisted affection, but pure were your means, and so they chased away the corruption." 

She sighed softly, and the group of five began to come in closer, to see this new person who made such an eerie appearance. 

"The rest of the castle shall slowly begin to wake. On their behalf, I thank you." 

"Are you the princess?" Shippou asked quickly, sensing a bit of finality in her tone, a sound of dismissal. "Of the castle?" 

A bit startled, she looked up at the kitsune. Though the rest of her was washed in white, her eyes were a deep, vibrant ocean blue, turned down at the corners as though she had worn sorrow for too long upon her face. "I am named Shiragiku, and this place is my home. You will wish to speak to the daimyo." 

"I think we'd rather talk to you, Shiragiku-sama," Miroku said, speaking before anyone else in the group as they again peered down towards a youkai chrysanthemum, so different in manner than the previous one. 

Wearily, she turned her eyes to him and frowned slightly, shaking her head and pulling at the sides of her spidery shawl, bringing it closer to her thumb sized self. "He can reward you for your removal of the curse, as I cannot. If he does not believe you, tell him to come to me, and I will vouch for your words, houshi-sama." 

Sango felt the flush of heat set off by Kirara when she detransformed behind her. A moment later, the bakeneko was winding her way through sets of legs and mewing politely at the new chrysanthemum, earning a tired smile and another sigh. Looking up again, she appraised the group peering in at her, either wide eyed or suspicious. The cat youkai, a kitsune child, a...she paused, carefully judging Inuyasha. A halfling of some sort. Another priest, well enough. Two women, one dressed oddly. All staring. 

"Shall I give you a sparkling smile?" she asked them then, the softness in her tone giving way to bitterness. "Will that be satisfaction, or shall you stare further?" 

"Gomen...." Kagome trailed as Shippou edged back towards her, and she pulled him closer. Looking down momentarily at his face, she could see disappointment. Whatever he had been hoping for, this was not it. "You're just different from Kigiku-sama...." 

"Different...no different." 

"Shiragiku-sama," Sango began, thinking a new tactic would be needed. "We don't mean any harm, but I think we're at least owed some sort of explanation. What happened, and who are you?" 

She edged away slightly, white petals curling up slightly, though not enough to hide her at all from their vision. Instead she tightened her grip on her shawl. Her audience was waiting for her to speak again, and she hesitated, a bit of curiosity growing. No acclaims on her beauty, no paper for painting or poetry. Instead, curious faces, some, such as the hanyou's openly suspicious. The child seemed worried, clutching the arms of the oddly dressed girl. He had run to greet her as she opened her eyes and began to breathe life into the garden again. 

"You expected someone far more romantic, did you not, little one?" she addressed him, an amused smile finally forming on her lips. "Gomen nasai, I'm not so elegant as Kigiku." 

"Kigiku was a bitch," Inuyasha stated matter of factly. Shiragiku stared at him, open mouthed for a moment, then looked away. "What?" 

"Kigiku is accustomed to being the fairest, and jealousy often turns into hatred. It was that which she used to cast you into sleep, and all the people within these castle walls." 

"So Kigiku was the bad fairy?" Shippou queried, looking up between Kagome's arms and asking her. 

"Er..." Kagome stuttered, realizing how much Shippou had apparently decided to apply the story to this situation. 

"Kigiku was not bad," Shiragiku told him, this time leaning forward in her cup of petals with an earnest look, almost pleading. "Do not call her such things. I was glad when she came here." 

"But she-" Shippou began to argue. 

"The Kigiku you met was far from the one I knew long ago. Do not call her such things, for the sake of memory, at least." 

Would they listen to a tale? Shiragiku wondered. Was there time for a tale? Already her strength flowed back to her through her roots, and something nearby was feeding it, singing sweetly to her. What delicious power one of them held. The expectant looks on their faces demanded some story, some telling of what had happened. They did not look for her aesthetic beauty, such as it was. It was because of that she decided to warm to them. 

"Kigiku and I were born in a meadow, far, far from here," she said, quietly at first, then gaining strength. She closed her eyes and envisioned one who did not stare, but rather saw some other beauty in her, a kind man who she had not seen in so many seasons now. 

"By day we spoke and laughed, living side by side as sisters would. One day, though, an old gardener came into our valley, and decided he wished to have Kigiku as his own, for his garden. Telling her how pretty she was, she was charmed by his words and left with him to live in his garden. 

"I lived alone for many seasons. One day though, a village chief came looking in our meadow, and told me he wished to take me to see his lord, to be the crest of his house." Then a smile filled her face, slowly but completely. "It was kind of him, and he spoke to me while he carried me here. He said he had met Kigiku, and found me to be the more lovely..." the smile grew strained. "But he spoke to me while we traveled here, and gave me to the daimyo, who accepted me and summoned many artists to draw my face. For many weeks further it was so, and my dear friend had left me here alone, to return to his duties and family. I was so happy to see Kigiku when she came...but she was so angry when that courier with her left her here. 

"I do not know why she hated me so. But she began to fill the air with poison, and I attempted to stop it." Shiragiku hugged herself more tightly again, withdrawing into her gleaming shawl and softening her voice further. "Kigiku and I ever were a match for each other. I could not stop it, but slowed it as I could. I did not want to face her, and so I slept as well." 

She closed her eyes and then opened them again, and the heavy depth of blue seemed somewhat lighter. "That is my tale, from what I have seen of it. The people stir outside. I feel them on the grasses, moving. They will come here soon, if you wait." 

As Shiragiku concluded her story, voices were being raised outside, shouts heard faintly through the growing garden. Though the story was single sided, it seemed familiar to Kagome, a myth she had heard before, a story of a Lady Yellow and a Lady White, two flowers with two different fates. And so it was- Kigiku, yellow chrysanthemum. Shiragiku, white chrysanthemum. If this was so, then she could also recall what would happen to Kigiku, or had happened with this old gardener. Kagome closed her eyes a moment, releasing Shippou and standing. It seemed they had stumbled into a fairy tale after all, though Sleeping Beauty it was not...quite. 

"There will be much confusion as they wake up," Miroku commented quietly to the group, though offering a hand to Sango, who had knelt down to hear Shiragiku speak. She accepted it and stood, starting slightly when he did not release it. "Perhaps we should see if we can find them?" 

"As you say, there will be confusion," Shiragiku told them carefully, choosing her words. "And unfamiliar faces may lead to alarm. If you so wish, stay within the garden's bounds. My voice will be listened to. Until then..." she closed her eyes and folded her arms, her short white petals curling around her as small white flowers began to rise around her and create a new flowerbed, cloaking her from view as she sank into invisibility. 

"Feh. What is it with them always disappearing?" 

Kagome elbowed Inuyasha, though rather than looking annoyed, he seemed almost thoughtful, the frown on his face altogether typical. With a sigh, Kagome smiled wanly, lightly tugging on his sleeve and making him turn and follow Sango and Miroku, who had begun to edge their way towards the side of the clearing, where new blossoms bloomed. Her grin spread even wider as she noticed that Miroku still had yet to release Sango's hand. 

"Mou, Inuyasha," she teased lightly, "if you look that grumpy when we meet up with the others in the castle, they'll think you're some terrible youkai." 

"Feh." 

  
From where he sat on the ground, Shippou sighed and looked at Kirara, who was watching the other four members of the group through wide scarlet eyes. "Ever feel like we get left out sometimes?" 

Kirara mewed in agreement, and Shippou petted her on the head, scratching behind her ears, causing her to purr. He glanced at the new, lacy white flowers unfolding alongside the place Shiragiku disappeared, then again at the others. Well, it wasn't _quite_ happily _ever _after, as the story goes- after all, this was hardly the end of the story- but it was an ending, at least. Maybe this ending should run more along the lines, "_...and they lived...._"   
  
  
  


~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~   
  
  
  


_Shiragiku_- 'white chrysanthemum'   
Shiragiku's telling of the story is somewhat more impartial, and much more accurate, to the story of _Lady Yellow and Lady White_, though still her perspective. As always, the truth lies somewhere between. Read on to the Epilogue, ne?   
Now, don't you agree that if Miroku fell under a sleeping spell, getting kissed would wake him up? And has anyone else noticed he seems to have an automatic-wake-up-groping-reflex? Houshi-sama gets knocked out, he has to grab something on the way back to consciousness. x.x   
And Shippou saves the day! Whoot! I had fun with that.   
Please do read the Epilogue. Shiragiku's telling is only her side...there is a touch more to the story of _Lady Yellow_. The version I read was from '_Myths and Legends of Japan_' by F. Hadland Davis. ::hugs her book::   
~Queen 


	11. epilogue

For The Fairest

  
  


_Epilogue-_

  
The tale was told, and there was no happy ending for her. 

In the silence of the dark room, a tiny form lay upon the ground, feeling her slender limbs stiffen and cease to flow with life. Having bloomed for herself, Kigiku's finely curled petals were shriveling, as were her exposed roots, open to the air and not kept moist in the earth. 

So _tired_. So very, very tired. Close her eyes, fade away, colors washed out. From the rubbish she had been pulled, and to the rubbish she would return. Memories of the sunny meadow so many seasons ago were bleached away by their own brightness. 

She opened one dull emerald eye and looked across the expanse of the floor. His face had changed since she had last seen it, but the man was still the same. "I had the shards," she told him, her melodic voice now the tone of a scratched whisper, licking dry lips. "I had them...why was I taken away? Why?" 

"Shikon no Tama is at its most beautiful when darkened by hate or despair. Your jealousy and hate would have blended well with the despair of loss. You failed." 

Kigiku closed her eyes, too tired to argue as he lifted her up. It was a familiar gesture, one he had made before, so long ago. For a moment, she hoped perhaps all was not lost; she only needed care. Water, sunlight. Kindness, perhaps, as well. 

Instead, her world grew dark as she felt new energies envelope her, thick and heavy and putrid, the smells of many youkai, filthy, horrible, ugly youkai, overwhelming her senses and giving her only a moment to gasp before she was consumed, holding onto that more hopeful memory of being lifted....   


There was a broken, tiny figure amongst the garbage that had been weeded away, a wilting flower amongst the fragrant, many-colored blossoms. Once she held her head high, proud of the beauty she possessed, letting all men gaze upon the fairness that had been graced to her by the gods. Though now, she lay in the rot of the dying and the dead, a smell of organic death surrounding her and reminding her of her own impending demise. Soon, she would add her own tiny body to the pile of trash, forgotten by those who once adored her, now that her loveliness was gone. 

She remembered a time long ago, living in a meadow peacefully, silently drinking in the rain and sunlight, laughing with her pale white sister. Yes, her pale white sister, who then remained in their meadow, while others complimented her, bringing her to a fine home, making her magic strong from adoration and loving care. 

The delicate, feeble limbs she possessed ached. She felt old and worn, aged though she had been cared for greatly in her life. Her pale white sister, who wept alone in their valley, had found a home at last...a home far better, richer and more beautiful than her own, for the eyes of a great lord had fallen upon her. She, the one found and admired first, had been passed over as merely another average beauty. Was she not as lovely as her sister? Not as soft? Not as fair? 

She was discarded now, by those who once admired her. Thrown away as though nothing. The magic she held withered with the aging of her body, and she hated the form she now bore. She hated being thrown away, nothing more than a dead flower. A flower plucked from the earth that fed it never lasted long in the world of humans. And she hated them for it. 

"It is good, to hate them." 

Those words penetrated her sleepy haze, a rich, warm voice that slipped across her hearing. Good to hate? Yes, it was good to hate. It was easy to hate. She felt herself lifted up, and held lightly by a strong hand. Tiny eyes opened, and she saw a man's face meet hers, though she knew it was not the face of a man, but of something other. Perhaps another kind of creature could pull her from this miserable place. If she were free, then she could grow strong and beautiful again. Again work her magic, and again be beloved. Did this person know what she was? Who she was? She summoned her strength and met the man's red eyes. He, too, was beautiful. Darkly so. 

"I was beautiful once. I could be again, if you take me from here." 

Cupped in his hands, she closed her eyes, willing it to be true. She felt motion around her, and was lifted up and away from the rotting smell. Warm relief washed through her. He could still see her beauty, her delicacy, her perfection. "Arigatou," she said softly. "Arigatou...." The last words trailed as her mind slipped away into a deeper sleep, and it was several days before she awoke again and learned the name of her savior. 

In the silence of the darkness he preferred, he called himself Naraku.   



End file.
